Ballad of the Spinster and the Outlaw
by Alby Mangroves
Summary: "Sometimes, at night, he'd walk in his meadow and look to the sky, hoping she was seeing the same full moon, the same brilliant stars." This is a story of second chances and intrepid hearts.
1. A Man Apart

**Many thanks to Ms Ambrosia and AnnetteInOz for their help with this ficlet.**

**If you don't like it, blame them- they encouraged me to post this silliness. It has been only between us for months, and then I had to go and ruin a perfectly good threesome.**

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><p><em><strong>.<strong>_

_**Olympic Peninsula Rainforest, 1880**_

**.**

The first time he saw her was also the last time he rode into town solely for his business.

Since that incredible, fateful day many months ago, he'd made every trip bolstered by the hope of seeing her.

He'd risked his own freedom, perhaps even his life, but he had to come.

He was painfully aware that the intervals between visits were becoming shorter, and foreboding inched up his spine like a giant centipede.

It used to be that he came to trade at the Forks General Store every few months.

This time, he had barely lasted a week.

At first, he didn't think about the logistics. He'd wake well before dawn, saddle up old Henry and set off for Forks town with Jim, the stray mutt, following along at their feet until the woodland's edge.

Pulled toward the town, almost against his will and certainly against his better judgment, he would imagine her in his mind, drawing her features with determination, if not skill.

With each visit, he'd add detail to his study, fleshing out the vision.

A lesser man might have given up; it took several wasted trips-with no sighting of her-to convince him to plan his reconnaissance with much more care.

He'd become a schemer.

For the first time in years, he'd started taking note of days of the week.

It took months to work it out during sporadic forays into Forks, but he'd eventually realized that his best chance to see her was on a Sunday.

Some might have called it obsessive.

He didn't call it anything at all; he just gave in to an urge that was as unfamiliar and disconcerting as much as it was undeniable, the urge to skim the edges of her radiance like a moth, singeing his wings on every pass.

And so, on Sundays, whether or not he rode into town, he found himself unable to think of anything but her. Her face, her bearing, everything about her fascinated him.

He'd think of her when washing in the frigid mountain stream, wondering at how warm her lovely skin would be when heated by sunlight, so rare here in the west.

He'd think of her when chopping wood for his fire, imagining her fine white hands gathering up the kindling to light it.

He'd think of her when lying on his narrow cot, imagining the tickling of furs on his skin to be her gentle caresses.

Sometimes, at night, he'd walk in his meadow and look to the sky, hoping she was seeing the same full moon, the same brilliant stars.

Mostly, he'd just remember _her_.

She had stolen into his cold soul and convinced it that it could warm.

Visualising the way she was when he first laid eyes on her, he'd wonder if he could ever lessen the distance between them, though he knew in his heart it could never happen.

He'd fight with himself and appease himself in equal measures, counting time from one Sunday to the next, even those that he spent in his modest cabin instead of venturing out.

On those days, he'd embrace the ache deep in his belly and delay his gratification, even that of food and water, while willing himself to be still.

He'd martyr himself, staying on the mountain instead of venturing to town to search her out and throwing himself, finally, at her mercy.

He knew now without a doubt that he loved her, but she would never want a man such as him. Still, he dared to dream of her, to torture himself with what might have been.

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><p>.<p>

He'd been trading in Forks for a number of years, ever since the Homesteading had begun in earnest and he'd been able to claim his little piece of newly minted Washington.

It was easy to snare or trap enough to feed himself, and put aside a little bit extra, too.

The furs and deer skins he traded at John Banner's General Store made it possible to get other necessities like flour, and even luxuries, like coffee, tobacco or even a new Colt.

That fateful day, he rode into Forks with several bundles of deer and beaver pelts, wanting nothing more than to have his horse re-shod and supplies replenished.

With the goods secured to the cantle at the back of his saddle, he rode easy through the obscure forest paths until they started to clear and become well-worn tracks.

He rode accompanied by the robins and the jays, their songs an ambient staccato over sounds of the breeze falling on damp moss.

As the light of the morning brightened the dim forest, he pulled his hat down lower onto his face and rode on, letting out the slack of Henry's bridle and allowing the horse's sure steps to take them into Forks at a leisurely pace.

Prosperity had begun to change the look of the little township, and he had started to notice signs of expansion.

He knew that the Quileute tribe had been approached. He also knew that while they'd accepted a treaty with Governor Stevens, nobody had yet bothered to make the difficult trek into the densely wooded cliff-side lands of La Push.

Nobody had enforced their move to the reservation in Taholah, which had been earmarked for them.

The Indians were counting on their land being worthless to the white men; too hard to approach and not rich enough in natural resources to plunder. He only hoped they were right.

Henry's unhurried gait took them past familiar landmarks and into the cool, breezy mid-morning light brightening the township.

It was normally such an overcast place that a day of sunlight was remarkable.

He rode through the outskirts of town noticing the new buildings that had sprung up since the previous winter, like mushrooms following big rains.

There was even a small and simple church, its little wooden spire rising modestly toward the perpetually overcast sky.

He did not know this one Sunday would change everything.


	2. White Sail

Thank you for your reviews and alerts! I didn't expect them, thinking that the Western/Historical boom was over, but you've been very generous. Thank you!

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><p>.<p>

_He rode through the outskirts of town noticing the new buildings that had sprung up since the previous winter, like mushrooms following big rains. There was even a small and simple church, its little wooden spire rising modestly toward the perpetually overcast sky._

_He did not know this one Sunday would change everything._

_._

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><p><em>.<em>

Thinking of nothing but the barter he hoped to make for his pelts, he watched the townsfolk go about their business from under the brim of his hat, indifferent to their lives.

With one hand on his thigh and the other resting loosely over the saddle's pommel, he had looked into the door of the church, at the parishioners filing out into the morning light.

His lip had twitched in silent amusement at the good Christians who sang praises to an omnipresent God while sitting in neat rows inside a dark building, instead of thanking him for his creation outdoors on a fine morning such as this.

Scornful and scowling, he had almost turned away when his quick eye happened onto something white, snapping out of the church doorway like the sail of a boat on a frisky breeze.

There was nothing white in his world on the mountain.

There was only the brown of the rich soil and the lush green of the forest. The flash of white was unexpected, glaring.

He looked intently at the flapping fabric until it revealed boot-clad feet.

Heavy black boots, laced up tight.

Obscured by shadows under the brim of his hat, he observed a woman with braided, sable hair walking out into the rare Forks sunlight, surrounded by a gleaming halo of white skirts.

The monochromatic contrast drew him and he couldn't help but follow the movement of the skirt with curious eyes, to see the woman who would pair the crisp white skirt of a lady with the plain heavy boots of practicality.

When he saw her, everything else became as ash on the wind; insubstantial.

"Whoa, old boy. Easy now, Henry," he murmured to the horse, keeping him steady with even strokes of his hand, his eyes studying _her_ every move.

With one arm around the waist of an elderly man and her other hand under his elbow, she walked slowly out of the little church, supporting him as though he was precious.

Her arms were so pale against the man's dark suit, the tilt of her wrist so delicate at the cuff of her sleeve, that he fought an inexplicable urge to assist her, to take the weight from her arms.

Instead, he had watched her surreptitiously as she slowly made her way out of the church, guiding and leading the infirm man down the wooden steps and onto the dirt of the road.

Unlike most women he had noticed, which admittedly were not that many, she was unadorned save for a knitted shawl around her shoulders.

The simple white skirt sat lightly on narrow hips and tucked in neatly under a little jacket, the shawl obscuring her torso in a most modest way.

She was obviously not the type of woman to draw attention to herself.

This was confirmed when he noticed that unlike most women coming out of the church, she was not wearing a silly little bonnet, and there were no pins, nor colorful fancies to draw a fickle eye to an intricate coiffure.

All he saw was the uncomplicated and completely unpretentious braid, thick and dark like a serpent coiling down her back and disappearing under the shawl.

Little wisps of dark hair had escaped the braid and followed the direction of the breeze to whip across her face like breaths of smoke.

The simplicity of this alone had made his sun-warmed skin tingle with an unexpected and incomprehensible happiness.

He didn't understand it, and rode on past the church and into town, with her image engraved onto the inside of his skull long after she had disappeared from view.

Her skirts had flapped and thrashed around her, the noise so different from the earthy stillness and quiet of his mountain home.

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><p>.<p>

It was several days before he admitted to himself that he was, indeed, unable to stop thinking about her, wondering what kind of woman she really was to wear those work boots instead of the fanciful heeled contraptions preferred by other ladies.

_The contradiction doesn't make any sense,_ he thought, as he chopped wood for his fire.

She left him confused.

It seemed to him that the practical boots belonged on a practical woman made of tougher stuff than others he had met.

He liked the idea of a tenacious woman.

God knew, he liked it a whole lot.

He'd dropped his axe, walked away from his home and into the woods tugging viciously on his beard, needing to deliberate some more.

The idea of a tenacious woman made his weather-beaten, toughened body feel weak with hunger and need.

Berating himself, he wondered if it had indeed been too long since he had had a woman (as _Shĩ-Pa_ often jested); he found the painted whores of Port Angeles repulsed him, while the idea of taking a nagging, flighty woman to wife left him completely cold.

So much so, that when _Shĩ-Pa_ suggested a woman from his own tribe, he had left the tent of his Quileute friend without a word, followed by sounds of jeering laughter at his expense, _Shĩ-Pa_'s guffaw loudest among them.

Since then, they had all called him The Cold One, but thankfully all talk of making him a match had ceased.

It took months before he accepted another invitation to sit and smoke with a contrite _Shĩ-Pa_ at his fire.

It was several weeks after that before he gave in to his unflagging fascination and rode back to town, having convinced his friend to let him take some seal skins to sell on behalf of the Quileute tribe.

He took the same route at the same time of day but did not see _her_, and after offloading the skins to John Banner, he sat gloomy and listless in the saddle while Henry, as though sensing his master's dampened mood, trudged slowly home, both of them with their heads hanging low.

The next trip, however, had been a small success, for although he didn't see her, he might have unwittingly found out her name.

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><p><em><strong>.<strong>_

_*****Shĩ-Pa - pronounced Shih-Pa, Quileute, meaning 'Black'. I have used this word as a name for you-know-who, though traditionally I have no way of knowing about traditional Quileute names. No offence is intended._


	3. Black Widow

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_The next trip, however, had been a small success, for although he didn't see her, he might have unwittingly found out her name._

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><p><em>.<em>

He appeared busy as he unloaded pelts from Henry's back, but he couldn't have been listening more intently had his life depended on it, when one Mrs. Stanley began gossiping about the townsfolk.

"...Mr. Swan, he's getting on in age. What a wonderful job Isabella is doing to care for him, giving up her own prospects, such as they were..."

Somehow, though Mrs. Stanley's words were commiserative, the inflection on them was contemptuous. It was obvious that the old cow was really saying Isabella _had_ no prospects.

_Isabella._

He had no idea whom she might be to the elderly Mr. Swan. His wife? His nurse? Was she perhaps his daughter?

Although there was no reason to hold out hope that the woman in the white skirts and _Isabella _were one and the same, he felt oddly elated at having found out this name, and unable to accept the hateful eventuality that she was the old man's wife.

He stayed among the dry goods at John Banner's store much longer than necessary, but Mrs. Stanley had already moved on to other, more salacious subjects, and did not mention _Isabella_ again.

This time when leaving the little township behind him, he was hopeful.

And so, it continued. For months, he'd been coming to Forks to see _Isabella._

Sometimes he caught a glimpse of her braid, earthen against white, as she stepped into a store. Other times he was lucky enough to see her up close, to follow her every movement with his hungry eyes, memorizing the angle of her resolute chin, her delicate and slightly freckled nose, the elegant fingers of her white hands, with their rounded nails pared short.

He couldn't get enough of those moments.

He inhaled her, sometimes forgetting to keep up the pretence of activity and stilling completely to observe her with all the diligence of a star pupil memorizing his lessons.

His trips into town increased in frequency, but somehow, his need for her did not lessen. It seemed the more he got, the more he wanted.

With each flip of her braid over her slim shoulder and slight lift of her bright skirts to keep them out of the dirt, he fell deeper and harder, and became more desperate.

He knew her every gesture, could recognize her willowy form from miles away. He never tired of cataloguing her intricacies and nuances.

Like a miser, he stored them all away in the vault of his heart, just to plunge his hands again and again into the treasure chest and let them tumble through his fingers like gold coins.

He stumbled to the river and threw himself in, laughing and crying, wanting her so damn much that it hurt to breathe.

In the dead of night, he could pretend that they belonged to each other, as lovers.

And then, one day, everything changed.

He knew this at one glance of her familiar and coveted form.

For on this day, she wore black.

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><p>.<p>

_previously..._

_._

Isabella was well aware of the town's opinion of her, and though she was indifferent to how she herself was perceived, it hurt her greatly to know that her father might be affected by the gossip.

She had hoped that after the passing of so many years, people would stop gnawing her tragedy like the old bone it was, and let it be buried quietly.

She did everything in her power to prevent becoming the fodder of hearsay and rumor mongering, which in her case, was to do nothing at all to draw attention to herself, unlike other young ladies.

She did not realize that it only made her more noticeable.

Where they wore colorful dresses with tiny corseted waists and intricately bunched bustles as was the fashion, she wore her own mother's outdated clothing, with its leaner, column-like silhouettes.

Isabella wore Renee Swan's dresses despite their frivolous and impractical light colors and old-fashioned cuts for remembrance- it was all she had of her mother.

Where other young ladies spent hours at their toilette (even in little old backwater Forks), Isabella spent no time at all, preferring her quickly plaited braid and clean water on her face each morning, her complexion unblemished and pale as a result.

Where eligible maidens nonchalantly paraded in pairs, waiting to catch the eye of a well-to-do bachelor, Isabella kept her father's modest house, performing all the duties that were once done by her own mother.

Where those virtuous virgins attended Church each Sunday, looking suitably demure and marriageable (while their chaperon mothers fended off admiring glances from the town's strapping sons), Isabella sat stiffly in the pews, with downcast eyes and hands clasped tight.

In short, where once she was a curiosity and a pitied unfortunate, she was fast becoming the old maid, the spinster, the town's outcast.

Where she sought to disappear, she became the glaringly obvious _other._

Where she had once (in fact, twice) had the pick of the town's young men, now she was destined to wear the brand of the pariah, and though she'd never married- the Black Widow.

While her father liked to attend Pastor Newton's sermons, Isabella thought them the worst kind of torture, endured only under greatest duress- that of putting her father's happiness and peace above her own.

She sat through the sermons week after week as though on a bed of nails, tolerating the ridiculous notion that there was a God and that he cared a fig for their mortal coil.

And so it happened that on a certain Sunday, she was once again in the stuffy little church, her arm secured around her father's waist as they made their way to the doorway at sermon's end.

Pastor Newton waited, shaking hands and exchanging pleasantries with the congregation.

While Isabella wanted to be quick about leaving, her father's shuffling gait invariably got them to the church door after everybody else had gone.

Such was the case this Sunday, and she dreaded it, for Pastor Newton was nothing if not persistent.

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><p>.<p>

**A/N:** Thank you for reading.


	4. Shiny Pebble

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><p>.<p>

_While Isabella wanted to be quick about leaving, her father's shuffling gait invariably got them to the church door after everybody else had gone._

_Such was the case this Sunday, and she dreaded it, for Pastor Newton was nothing if not persistent._

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><p>.<p>

As they neared the door, the Pastor's blue eyes met Isabella's with a smile. He held out his hand, no doubt meaning to capture hers with it.

Remembering the lingering kiss over her knuckles the last time she allowed him to lift her hand to his lips, she faltered.

In a flash of inspiration, Isabella took hold of her father's elbow and continued on, offering the Pastor Charles Swan's own gnarled hand instead.

Carefully arranging her features into a blank mask, she did not look up to see his reaction; she knew it would be one of confusion.

She was spared the unpleasant guilt by her father, who appeared happy to engage the Pastor on their behalf.

"A wonderful sermon as always, Pastor Newton," Charles Swan began, allowing his frail hand to be vigorously shaken.

As expected, the Pastor immediately launched into an in-depth examination of the inanity he had preached. Isabella allowed her attention to drift as she looked out of the church doorway, down the dirt road leading out of town, and into the densely forested Forks woodland.

And there, for the first time of many, she found herself looking at a certain man on a horse.

It was dark within the church, and the man was silhouetted in rare, bright sunshine as he rode in with the morning sun at his back.

For a few moments, Isabella admired the ethereal effect of the sun's shimmering aura around the man and his horse, but as he rode closer, she began to see some detail in the figures.

The big chestnut horse was loosely bridled, and its rider rode seated with a finesse that came only to those who spent their lives in the saddle.

He rocked fluidly in his seat, perfectly in sync with the movement of the graceful animal beneath him.

He wore a wide-brimmed hat pulled low over his brow so she could not see his features clearly, except for the tendrils of a magnificent beard swaying in the breeze over his worn, long leather coat.

He looked to be quite tall, and with the sun in her eyes his beard was rusty-brown, like the soil in Isabella's vegetable garden. She did not recall seeing him before and wondered where he'd ridden from.

With the leather of his long coat rubbed to a shine in places and his boots dusty from the road, he looked like a drifter. Intrigued, she looked on as he rode closer, silhouetted dramatically against the yellow radiance.

It was his circumspect demeanour which she found most interesting; he looked like he wanted to disappear into the background.

To Isabella, however, he couldn't have been more visible had he ridden into town in a royal carriage. Even the sun at his back seemed brighter than Forks normally allowed.

He was mysterious and fascinating, like one rough, black pebble in a riverbed of thousands of smooth ones. She wanted to pick up that pebble and rub her fingertips over it to uncover its shine.

In an existence as mundane as hers, anything standing apart from the ordinary caught her observant eye, and she now latched onto the enigmatic allure of this stranger, captivated by the puzzle he presented.

That beard, for a start: only old prospectors or Highwaymen wore beards so unkempt and untrimmed.

Certainly, all the younger men these days preferred a neatly styled moustache over such natural growth. This man looked neither old (he sat straight as an arrow and tall in his saddle, his body unbent by age), nor a bandit, though she supposed one could never know if he was secreting a rifle under that well-worn coat.

Was he hiding his face under that scruffy beard? This interesting proposition made Isabella's naturally curious mind thrum with possibilities.

Though one hand held the reins of the bridle in a loose grip, his other hand rested lightly on his thigh, calloused fingers relaxed and natural.

Tall and imposing, he was a dark presence on an otherwise bland backdrop of town, dirt roads, and never ending forest. He drew the iron in Bella's blood like a magnet, and she felt more fascination in this short moment than she had in all her recent years.

Her reverie was broken by an expectant silence, and she realized that the two men beside her were waiting on her answer to a question she had missed. She reluctantly tore her eyes away from the fascinating dilemma of the drifter.

"I'm sorry, Pastor; could you please repeat the question? I'm afraid I wasn't paying attention," Isabella admitted guiltily. She could feel her father becoming weary of standing so long in one place and tightened her grip to bolster him up.

"Why, I was just accepting your father's invitation to supper and awaiting your approval, trusting that my presence at your table would not interfere with your plans for the evening?" Pastor Newton's blue eyes were tentative as he awaited her reply. Isabella looked to her father, carefully hiding her disappointment and anger. So, it was back to this.

"Of course not, Pastor, what time shall we expect you?" It would have been foolish to oppose the idea, when everyone knew that she had no plans.

_Not ever._

With the time agreed upon and the matter settled, Isabella led her father out into the sunshine, which only moments ago was full of promise and mystery, and was now mocking her with false hopes. Fittingly, they shuffled past the dusty little graveyard, its worn timber crosses reaching up like bent fingers jutting from the earth.

"Don't think I don't know what you're up to, my girl," murmured Charles Swan as they made their from the church and into the street, toward their little horse-drawn wagon.

Isabella stiffened. She helped her father climb up onto the bench and waited to be reprimanded.

Hearing no answer, Charles continued in a quiet tone. "Don't you think it's time you left an old man to his own devices? I'm perfectly capable of looking after myself, you know."

They both knew these words were a lie, but now she bristled with a different awkwardness. It was now painfully obvious Charles Swan was angling for her to wed Pastor Newton.

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><p>.<p>

**A/N:** Thank you for reading.


	5. Charitable Offer

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_It was now painfully obvious Charles Swan was angling for her to wed Pastor Newton._

_._

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Sadness hung in the air between them, the regretful father and the loyal daughter.

Nothing would have made Charles Swan happier than to see Isabelle fulfilled, preferably wedded, with little children and a house of her own to keep.

Instead, she was tied down to an old anchor rusting in the mud.

Isabella, on the other hand, would have liked nothing more than for her father to accept she would never marry. Her happiness would never again depend on a man; she simply wasn't interested.

At the ripe age of thirty two, she was wholly resigned to spinsterhood and her only grievance was that she couldn't do more to make her father comfortable in his needful years.

"He's a good man," Charles continued softly once they were seated in their wagon.

Isabella sighed, knowing that nothing she said would halt this conversation.

"I won't marry Pastor Newton, Pa. I do wish you'd stop worrying about me. I've no mind to find a husband at all, let alone one holier than myself."

She could feel his exasperation without looking up to see it, and smirked a little at her own childish goading.

"I saw you looking at that fella, you know, the one that came riding along into town just now."

An awkward pause settled between them at that, and Isabella wondered what answer her father expected to this pronouncement. Should she answer truthfully- that she simply fancied the drifter's bearing? Should she perhaps say that she found his stature... attractive?

Yes, that was it; she had found the man on a horse attractive.

How this was possible without meeting him was a mystery, but Isabella knew for certain as soon as the thought had crossed her mind, that she did indeed find the drifter undeniably agreeable.

"I don't believe I've seen him around here before," she replied, attempting casual nonchalance, "Why, do you know him, Pa?"

She knew there was more to it when he just muttered under his breath. She did not press him, figuring their conversation at an impasse—she didn't want to talk about the pastor, he didn't want to talk about the drifter.

It surely didn't matter who he was.

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><p>.<p>

Charles Swan contemplated lying to his daughter. He wanted so much to dismiss her question out of hand and press for Michael Newton's suit, because deep down, he thought that this was Isabella's only available course. That, or a life spent barren and alone.

The pastor had been persistently hinting at his interest for a long time, and Charles had finally decided to give his approval of the courtship, in the hope that this would finally push his daughter to look upon Newton favourably.

Lately, Charles had dragged them to church week after week, hoping that seeing the pastor with regularity would bring her around.

He dawdled and shuffled when it was time to leave, knowing that the pastor would wait at the door.

He held his breath the day that Pastor Newton kissed Isabella's hand as though it were a delicate flower whose petals he didn't wish to bruise.

She had shown no reaction at the time, but Charles despaired of her when the first thing she'd done upon walking into their home, was to wash her hands ever so thoroughly with lye soap and water, scrubbing off non-existent dirt until her fingers were red and shiny.

He knew then that the battle was almost lost. Inviting Pastor Newton to their home was Charles' last attempt at opening Isabella's eyes to the man's goodness, for there was no doubt that he was good, though officious and boring were also fair words to describe him.

Instead, whilst agreeing to entertain the Pastor for supper, she had just now flatly refused to discuss the possibility of this leading to a proposal she might accept.

Charles felt suddenly very, very old, and incredibly tired.

He supposed he could understand her stubbornness because he was certain that the trait came from him. Her reasons were also somewhat sound, when one was aware of the heartbreak in her past.

He had still hoped that one day she would see there was nothing to be gained by living in the past, and so he made the fatal mistake of misjudging her real reason for opposing the match.

He hadn't really considered that she might just _not like_ Michael Newton. It did not enter his mind that his practical and clear-headed Isabella could be a creature led by her senses rather than her rational mind.

She had always seemed so much like Charles, rather than her sensual and imaginative mother.

He hadn't realised until today that her eye could be drawn—just like that—to someone else, to a man she didn't know from Adam, and one with an unfortunate past to boot.

A man whose name Charles doubted but a few of the local townsfolk would even know or recognize anymore.

A man such as Anthony Masen.

And so it was that Pastor Newton came to supper, complimented Isabella on the best home cooking he had tasted since his own mother—God rest her soul—was alive, and smoked a pipe contentedly with Charles Swan while discussing the changing times.

When the fire began to die on the hearth and Charles' soft snores were the only sounds to be heard above the shifting of burning embers, Pastor Newton rose to leave and asked Isabella to see him out.

He then threw all caution to the wind, and encouraged by the most pleasant evening he had just spent in her company, Pastor Michael Newton finally declared himself.

On her front porch and under the clear night skies, he proposed marriage to Isabella Swan.

"Now, I don't believe all the superstitious talk that you're bad luck," he reassured her kindly. "I'll be a steady and true husband, and provide for us both."

Reaching for her stiff fingers, he told her he'd admired her for years, and that he knew not to expect children, seeing as the both of them were no longer young.

"Those things are best left to God," he said.

And there, he made his final mistake.

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><p>.<p>

**A/N:** I know I shouldn't be amused at people's generally uncharitable opinion of Mike. No, I shouldn't. No. Should not. Nope.


	6. The Held Tongue

_"Those things are best left to God," he said._

_And there, he made his final mistake._

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><p>.<p>

Whatever promises he might have made to her that night were negated by his last sentiment.

Never mind that he'd backhanded her with all the horrible gossip she'd had to endure- Isabella wasn't an oblivious woman, she knew how they all saw her.

Never mind that he near outright called her old and barren. No, never mind _that._

It was his mention of God that burned his last bridge.

Isabella wanted nothing to do with the thief God who stole beautiful young men away to war and allowed them to be shot full of musket balls, their dear bodies mutilated and torn beyond recognition.

She wanted no part of a bloodthirsty God who would allow for such treasured young men to be buried in a barren, blood-soaked field far away from their loved ones, where neither their remains nor their memory could be tended to by the people they left behind.

She wanted nothing from Michael Newton's selfish God, who demanded blind obeisance in return for death of the faithful, and endless grief for those who loved them.

Momentarily considering how to word her response, Isabella noticed an absence of sound in the house, where previously Charles Swan was heard to be snoring.

She sighed, realizing she now had to keep her answer palatable to both men.

She could neither confess to finding Pastor Newton himself wholly undesirable, even though it was the truth, nor tell him what an irony it would be for her to marry a man of God, bitter cynic and blasphemer that she was.

Knowing her father engineered them to have this moment alone by pretending to have fallen asleep, and quite sure that he was now hanging on their every word, she also could not take the second option.

She could not now tell Pastor Newton that she would never marry while her father yet lived, because she couldn't burden her Pa with the knowledge that he held her back from what he imagined to be some semblance of happiness. It would have broken his heart.

Instead, she delayed. Playing the blushing maiden though she was in fact neither, Isabella hid her disdain so as not to upset and humiliate him.

"Oh! This is most unexpected!" she said, untruthfully. "Thank you for your offer, Pastor, I'm truly humbled and grateful that you'd consider _me _for wife." And though drawing it out was the last thing she wanted to do, she asked him, "May I think on it?"

Unseen inside the house, her father just shook his head sadly and sagged into his chair.

"Of course, Miss Swan, take all the time you need," the Pastor replied, just as untruthfully, hurt that she did not immediately seize the chance to become his bride. After all, what other prospects had she?

Isabella watched him ride away into the cool night with a heavy heart, knowing she was prolonging the inevitable disappointment he would soon suffer.

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And so it was that Isabella and her father continued to attend church on Sundays, the uncomfortable silence extending between her and the two men, one hoping for her acceptance and the other dreading her refusal.

It had been three weeks since the proposal, and yet Isabella could never find the right moment in which to give the Pastor her answer.

He had shown nothing but patience, and though she often felt his eyes on her, he never approached nor pressured her.

Isabella thought his patience was borne of his calling. In fact, Michael Newton was no fool. He sensed her approaching rejection and was in no hurry to receive it.

The day she finally resolved the matter was a day like any other, or so it seemed in the morning when she began her walk.

She had no destination except to wander in the fresh air of the cool forest that grew around her home, and in truth, she never wandered far as it was densely overgrown, low ferns and giant firs all fighting for light under the misty, overcast canopy.

She loved the incredible smell of these woods; the mixture of green freshness and rain tinged with the mossy, decaying undergrowth, was somehow nostalgic, comforting. The forest was omniscient and ancient, and in it, she felt at peace.

As she walked on the outskirts of the forest with the usual Forks drizzle misting her face, she noticed the familiar silhouette of a man on a large chestnut horse as he rode slowly past her home and toward town.

She was quite sure he hadn't noticed her, and so felt free to openly run an inventory of his appearance, beginning with acknowledgement of the fact that his appeal to her had not lessened. In fact, her heart raced inexplicably, as though excited at seeing him again.

She noted that it did not race at the sight of Pastor Newton, nor had it shown any such flighty inclination toward anyone at all for a very, very long time.

She felt her hands tightening into fists at her sides and made herself relax them, flexing her fingers and willing them to do her bidding.

She followed the horseman's gently swaying movements with her eyes, the misted tails of his long leather coat fanned over the back of the saddle. His face was once more obscured by his beard and the wide brim of his worn-in hat, dew pearling from the rim.

He held the reins with pale, elegant hands, and looked to exert only subtle pressure on leading his horse.

His boots rested lightly in the stirrups and the absence of spurs on his heels signalled an understanding between a well-trained animal and his master.

Well-formed thighs lay casually over the horse's flanks, long legs flexing with the slow movement of the beast beneath him. The pitch and yaw of his swaying body was fluid as dancing and Isabella had never before thought that riding a horse could look so... provocative.

She stood rooted to the earth watching as he disappeared from view, and when he rode over a crest in the road and beyond the reach of her eyes, she finally allowed herself to rest against the trunk of a large pine until her heart calmed and her breath came easily.

Isabella walked home thoughtful and pensive, and resolved to ask her father again about the man on the horse, this time with conviction.

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**A/N:** Hello! Thank you for reading. Lack of review replies was brought to you by frantic writing of copious amounts of various fanfiction. Forgive me?


	7. The Outlaw

_Isabella walked home thoughtful and pensive, and resolved to ask her father again about the man on the horse, this time with conviction._

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Charles Swan recognized Isabella's set expression as the one he often wore when determined to have his way. He gathered his thoughts around him and finally set adrift the burden he'd carried for years.

"He's a wanted man, Isabella," he told her grimly. "That there riding into town was Anthony Masen, and he's been on the run since those murders up at the Masen ranch, years ago."

Isabella sat wide-eyed and hanging on his every word, not one to shy away from dark tales, now imagining the mysterious horseman at the center of the gunfight she'd heard of as a girl.

Her adventurous and imaginative spirit had been very moved by the tragic story of the Masens and their doomed young son.

Seeing that hungry glint in her eyes, Charles despaired. He had hoped to warn her off, but the opposite was happening- she wanted more.

He sighed, knowing she would not rest until he told her the whole story.

"We thought he was dead, but I tell you, Bella, I won't never forget the look of that young man. It was a day from hell, and I thought I'd seen it all."

Charles was a seasoned sheriff at the time that young Masen's parents were gunned down by a gang of outlaws, and he told Isabella the story like a campfire tale on a starry night.

The Law rode out to the Masen farm, alerted by a "...plume of smoke from their burning stables. We thought they'd had a grass fire, though it was the wrong time of year," Charles mused. "We found several of the help, as well as Rancher Masen and his good lady wife there." Charles sighed, gazing out into the forest, trying not to recall too clearly what their contorted bodies looked like, lying lifeless in the dust, the rancher's wife's skirts hitched up where a lady's had no business being. Charles momentarily closed his eyes, remembering his own hand as it reached out to cover her modesty.

The boy, barely become a man, had been kneeling beside his mother's corpse, a "...rifle across his knees. One of the raiders killed by that very rifle had been lying close by, and I don't think he was the only one to have had a taste of it. Though, by the time we got there, they had looted what they could and were long gone. The fire'd been burning for an hour at least, most of the outbuildings were nothing but cinders and ashes. It was some kind of miracle that the ranch didn't burn, too. I remember how it looked, like a lone survivor among all that carnage. Just like that boy."

Sheriff Swan grieved for the orphan with dusty, streaked cheeks, dirt and tears mixing into mud on his face.

But as broken and helpless as young Masen appeared, it was the set of his shoulders and a certain glint in his eyes that had Sheriff Swan worried from the outset.

Isabella imagined that bereft young man, despair and grief mixed with a furious need for vengeance- she knew those feelings well.

She had come through that same fire with her blood boiling hotter than hell.

Charles shook his head, as though dislodging the painful memories from where they'd clung like haunting specters over the years.

"Not three years after the Masens were killed, members of that very same outlaw gang turned up with more holes in 'em than a sieve," Charles continued in a quiet, halting voice, sounding like he wished he could stop talking. "But, one of them, I cannot quite recall what he said his name was- Mark? Marcus? No matter. He was still gurgling blood when we got there. Before he finally kicked the bucket, that thieving bastard told us all about the kid with a death wish who'd killed his brothers, blinded by rage..."

Charles paused, his eyes full of faraway remembering. "He might've been full of rage and hatred, but he weren't blind enough to miss."

Isabella gasped with her hand at her throat. "Was it him? Was it young Masen that did it, Daddy?"

Charles nodded wearily. "I reckon he waited for 'em at their own hideout near the Sol Duc branch-off and he picked 'em off one by one with his father's own Winchester."

"Oh, God, he killed them all..." Isabella whispered, turning away to the window so her father would not see her over-bright eyes.

_He killed the men who had killed his family._

"He wouldn't have been twenty years old yet," Charles continued, remembering that at the time, nobody knew who the shooter had been, only that he'd conveniently taken the law into his hands to dispatch the Volturi blight that had troubled the region for years.

Sheriff Swan had reached his own conclusions, and when he ventured up to the Masen ranch to check on young Anthony, he found the place long abandoned.

He'd even headed a small delegation up to La Push to see if a body had washed up downriver, to no avail.

Anthony Masen had disappeared, never to be seen since.

Nobody knew for sure if he was the killer and his body was never found, but there were those, Sheriff Swan among them, who "...thought that a young man paid with his own life to avenge the deaths of his parents that day."

Isabella remembered hearing of Anthony Masen's story now, though she hadn't heard it since she was a girl, and now envied him the one thing she never had- retribution, even if paid for with his life.

After her own bereavement, she'd wanted to die, too. The price had seemed small then.

It seemed now, though, that he wasn't dead at all, only dead to the world that had known him.

Now that she saw him still living, still paying the price for his retribution, Isabella's old anger suddenly burned out into ashes, dry and bitter in her mouth.

She couldn't imagine the weight he carried on his shoulders, amplified by so many years of having to hide and pretend he was dead.

She'd never imagined that he'd have to keep paying all his life just like she had been, giving up everything and everyone, hiding himself away just to survive.

"I imagined that Masen had been wounded in the gunfight and crawled off into the scrub, perhaps falling into the river and snagging tight under some waterlogged roots, you know how the river gets in late fall. Or maybe he'd been carried off by animals."

Charles finally looked at his daughter, sitting very still across the table. "Until I spied a man come riding into town on a big horse a while back."

The set of his shoulders, the way that man moved had been so familiar, the lawman in Charles Swan just had to investigate.

He'd followed that drifter into the General Store as inconspicuously as he could, and though he was a full-grown man and no longer the orphaned youth of all those years ago, Charles had become convinced that the broken boy, the vigilante killer and this bearded, mysterious drifter were one and the same person.

He'd watched that man do his business in a quiet and respectful manner, dealing fairly with John Banner and other merchants, sometimes accepting less than his pelts and skins were worth and taking them as trade on things he needed. That alone spoke for his character.

Had he harboured suspicions that Anthony Masen was still a killer, he "...would have paid a visit to the Sheriff and turned him in. I might not be Sheriff anymore, but I'm bound to the law, Isabella."

She nodded mutely, her mind spinning. "But you didn't."

Charles looked into the depth of green forest outside his home, as though all the answers were there, no matter the question. This place always made him feel like that- like he was a small part of something bigger. Like he didn't have to carry the burden alone. He loved this place. Loved his home. Loved his daughter.

"No, I did not." He felt nothing but sympathy for that despairing boy of long ago, and some grudging respect toward the avenger.

He'd often wondered if he would have done the same as young Masen when faced with such a tragic loss. He remembered all too well the pain of being left behind, and without saying as much, he thought Isabella might, too.

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**A/N:** Thanks for reading and reviewing if you are so inclined.


	8. A Swan's Resolve

_He'd often wondered if he would have done the same as young Masen when faced with such a tragic loss. He remembered all too well the pain of being left behind, and without saying as much, he thought Isabella might, too._

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"I did nothing. I should've turned him in, but I didn't. I watched and waited to see if he'd put a foot wrong. If that man had so much as raised his voice to John Banner, I'd have been on him faster than a tick on a dog's ass. But, he never stepped out of line, not once all these many years."

As he fell silent, Charles wondered at Isabella's reaction to his story.

He felt lighter having unburdened himself, but wondered if his daughter would think less of him, if she'd think he'd done wrong not to take it to the law. He watched her as she stared blankly out the window and hoped that she would understand him keeping a silent, careful eye on Masen instead of turning him in, making sure the man didn't take liberties with right and wrong.

Which, thank the Lord, he never did. John Banner certainly had no complaints as he was always paid, sometimes with gold, sometimes by barter. Masen never gave his name, but didn't trouble the shopkeeper often enough for the old man to care.

"You're absolutely sure it's him?" Isabella asked, her faraway eyes staring into the darkening green, her face unreadable. Charles had never been able to tell what she was thinking in that clever head of hers. She was just like her wonderfully perplexing mother that way, full of her woman's mysteries.

"I'm sure, Bella."

Would she judge that Masen had paid a high enough price, just by giving away his right to live in civilized society? Charles hoped so.

"He lives alone up in the mountains somewhere, I'm sure of that, too. Lives frugal, I reckon, keeps to himself and comes into town on occasion, when he needs something like tools or stores."

Isabella sat up straight at that with undisguised interest animating her eyes.

"Why do you think he lives up there? Maybe he moves around from place to place, living by a campsite?"

"No, no, I don't think he moves around. I told you I've been watching. He ain't no drifter. He buys things that serve no purpose to such a one, things that would burden him and his horse. Things like grain stores and bags of sugar. One time he got himself a brand new spade. What's a drifter want with a spade, Bella?"

She nodded, directing her eyes outside again.

"Why do you think he's alone up there?" she enquired, altogether too casually.

Charles looked up darkly and tweaked his mustache in consternation. "He's on his own, all right. If he had a band of men up there, they'd all have been trickling into town at one time or another, and he's been the only one coming in. There ain't no woman up there either, judging by the way he's keeping himself, all tattered and overgrown like a holy hermit. No self-respecting woman who ever held a needle darned those breeches for him that's for damn sure."

Isabella imagined the horseman up in the mountains, his rough exterior and basic life away from the influence of the township, and had to agree with her father. She was quietly surprised at how much notice Charles had been taking of the man. She'd thought his eyesight poor and his body infirm, but it was clear that her old Pa's mind was a quick as ever.

"I think he paid a heavy price for the loss of his family, and for daring to avenge that loss," Charles said softly, tired now and saddened. It had been seventeen years since the deaths of his parents, and Anthony Masen would pay that price until his dying day.

As he fell silent, Charles looked grimly at his daughter, wondering if he had done the right thing to tell her.

He knew she was a trustworthy confidante, but regretted burdening her with this secret. She would keep it, he knew, if only to keep her own father safe. He'd be judged harshly for not turning Masen in to the law years ago.

That, however, wasn't his biggest concern.

No, if he was honest with himself, Charles was more worried by the interest Isabella had shown in the subject.

Did her renewed questioning mean that she had seen Masen again, or that she had not stopped thinking about him since?

And which was worse?

Charles did not like the loaded silence while she contemplated his words, staring with unseeing eyes while the house creaked and groaned and settled around them, the heat of the day dissipating into the cool evening.

As minutes slowly elapsed with nothing more said, he finally left her alone to her thoughts, hoping she would come to him in her own good time.

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Isabella was stunned by her Pa's recollections, though not because she judged his decision or feared the drifter she now knew to be Anthony Masen.

Her father would have been surprised to learn that she thought she had found a kindred spirit, and an inspiration.

In short, she was awed.

Here was someone who had suffered a heart-rending loss and somehow, lived through it.

Not only had Anthony Masen survived the tragedy, but he had rallied, and it appeared that he may have meticulously planned his revenge on the rabble that had decimated his family, at the ultimate expense of a future for himself.

Isabella would have given anything to have had that opportunity for revenge, but there was not one man responsible for the death of her beloved Peter all those years ago.

It was a faceless wraith that took him in the name of the War of the Rebellion.

All she could do was swallow her silent grief until it, in turn, swallowed her.

She was bereft, then and now, and envied Masen his vengeance.

It dawned on her then, that she was unfairly giving Pastor Newton false hope.

She had long known she would never marry, and should have had the courage to tell him outright instead of keeping him waiting week after week. Under the pretext of sparing his feelings, she had taken the easy road.

Now, with the story her father had told echoing in her mind, she could no longer excuse her cowardice in the face of Anthony Masen's extreme sacrifice.

Just like he once had, she would straighten her back and face her fears with her shoulders squared, like a Swan should.

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**A/N:** So, an indirect answer to a recurring question: if you'd shot down the villains that murdered your family, would you keep your name? Thanks for reading and reviewing if you are so inclined!


	9. Her Own Woman

_...she could no longer excuse her cowardice in the face of Anthony Masen's extreme sacrifice._

_Just like he once had, she would straighten her back and face her fears with her shoulders squared, like a Swan should._

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Isabella prepared her father's supper, saw him safely to bed, and no longer conflicted, threw on her coat and shawl.

She set off unmindful of the drizzling rain, to tell Michael Newton of her decision, breathing deeply the frigid, moist air as though it were liberation.

When she finally stepped onto his porch, she didn't have to say anything; one look at the resolve shining through her wet and wind-blown face told him everything he needed to know.

He greeted her with a sad smile in the knowledge he had given it his best try.

"Good evening, Miss Swan, rather late for a lady to-"

"Pastor Newton," she interrupted, impatient to finish it for both their sakes. "I am terribly sorry to inconvenience you at this late hour. I simply could not sit by another moment and have you believing that I was still considering your offer."

Thinking her cruel, Michael Newton's face hardened into a mask.

Isabella steeled herself to confess, more than she ever would in his church. "The truth is that I shall never marry. I have always known it. It was inexcusable of me to delay my answer in this manner, I cannot apologize enough."

She looked up into his eyes and told it to him plainly in a quiet voice. "I could never be your wife, Pastor. I am not a God-fearing woman, nor a good Christian. I delayed only so that I would not break my Pa's heart outright, as he believes that you are my last chance, come to save me from my spinsterhood." Isabella smiled bitterly, wringing her hands. "He loves me, and wants what's best for me, and I wanted to let him believe it but a little longer. I should have known better. It was so selfish of me, and I truly am sorry."

Michael Newton rested his hands on his hips for the lack of a better thing to do with them, struggling for a reply to her bleak honesty.

Lowering his head, he nodded, finally accepting that she would never be his. Rain began to fall in earnest then, as if the skies were lamenting their missed opportunity.

"Let me take you home, Miss Swan, I cannot allow you to trudge home in this weather," he said stiff as starch, reaching inside for his coat and hat.

"Oh no, I could not presume-"

"No, no," he hushed her, his hands upraised. "Please now. Let me do this. It's only right."

And so it was that Isabella sat beside Pastor Newton in his little buggy, with rain pelting their backs as they pushed through an awkward soup-thick silence.

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Disoriented, Charles sat up in bed at the sound of movements outside. By the time he finally got to his feet, a quietly sobbing Isabella stood like a stone cold pillar on the porch, and Michael Newton's buggy was pulling away, the Pastor a picture of wet, hunched over misery at the reins.

"Goddamn it," Charles whispered, looking to heaven and wishing more than ever it'd been him who'd died all those years ago, in place of his Renee. Once more, Isabella needed her mother's arms to grieve in. He'd always felt so inadequate when she needed comforting, his hands seemingly big and awkward when trying to soothe a fragile girl.

He shuffled to the door, steeling himself for her old pain to drip out of her like blood from a reopened wound. All he could do was assist her inside with _his_ arm around _her_ shoulders for once.

He was glad when she let him, though he had a distinct sense of it being for his sake.

Somehow he knew that she was far away with her old grief rotting away in her heart, with memories of the boy she'd buried long ago.

He'd always been a capable person, but this... This had always been beyond him. He hated his helplessness.

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Inside the little house embraced by the forest, two lonely people lay in separate rooms, mere feet and entire worlds apart.

Isabella laid restless, embraced by the moonless night, black shadows elongating over her clasped hands and inside her heart.

She had made her choice long ago, and felt only relief at finally releasing the pastor, and her father, from false hope. Even Charles had seemed to finally understand she feared only disappointing him, and not the consequences of spinsterhood. She almost cried again herself thinking at how valiantly he had finally relented.

Many nights were sleepless, haunted by specters of the past, but this night was different. This night was cathartic. Tonight, however, she felt as though she could let Peter go, too.

Strangely, nothing had outwardly changed, but she herself was different. She felt liberated, no longer under the weight of any man's expectations.

Throwing back her coverlets, she tiptoed from her bed and kneeled by the timber glory box that once might have accompanied her to the home of a husband.

Setting aside good linens and gifted treasures, she reverently lifted out a small silver tobacco box, opening it close to her nose.

She breathed deeply, drowning in the familiar and distinctive dry scent, and in her mind's eye, watched Peter's face the day he gave to her the treasure within it, so hopeful, and at once so afraid, drowning under the foreboding that he would not come back to her from the war in the south.

Fresh tears began to fall under the weight of those memories, but instead of the heavy, desperate grief, she felt lighter. Sensing that she could finally release Peter's ghost from the vault of her heart, Isabella lifted a blue ribbon from the tobacco box, and studied the blond lock of hair tied within it.

He had been beautiful, her Peter, as fair as a pink cherub with golden locks, the kind she'd seen in an old painting once.

Smiling through a rainbow of memories, she recalled the day they'd exchanged locks of hair as keepsakes, the same day they gave each other their innocence on the moist grass of a riverside clearing.

The day before he left.

Cloaked in a thick blanket, Isabella walked out to the porch clutching the keepsake.

Into the windy, dark night, she held up her hands and released Peter's hair from the ribbon, wisps of corn silk floating away on the cold breeze along with her farewell.

"I think... I can let you go now," she whispered into the night, and watched as the empty ribbon fluttered from her fingers, disappearing among the ancient trees.

"Farewell, Peter. You were my best friend, and I miss you still."

The forest whispered and swayed, and she imagined a weight sloughing off her body, shedding to the earth like an old skin.

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**A/N:** Thank you for reading. For those who asked, I hope to update this once a week or so, life permitting. Cheers, ~a


	10. Of Hauntings and Visitations

_"Farewell, Peter. You were my best friend, and I miss you still."_

_The forest whispered and swayed, and she imagined a weight sloughing off her body, shedding to the earth like an old skin._

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Isabella returned to her bed and sank into the deepest sleep she'd had in years, the kind that children succumb to after a day's running and laughing, gulping fresh air.

In stark contrast, her father lay awake most of the night in the adjacent room, with the weight of guilt and regret tucked around him like a shroud.

His daughter, his only child, had rejected what he saw as her last chance at a respectable familial future within their tiny community. She'd turned the Pastor down, and there would be no more suitors now. Newton had been the only one in years, and he'd been forgiving enough to overlook what the staid folk of this town saw as Isabella's shortcomings. As a man of God, perhaps he'd had to.

Isabella was headstrong and stubborn- that was true; she would never make a meek and gentle wife. She was not pious or godly, and she'd have great difficulty attempting to be those things. In a small epiphany, Charles grudgingly admitted to himself that she would have been unhappy as the wife of a churchman. She'd suffocate under that yoke.

And while she'd deny it to her last breath, Charles would be an albatross around her neck. He knew she'd refused the Pastor partly on his account. No new husband would relish having his bride's decrepit father come along with the dower, and she'd never leave him behind to fend for himself.

Charles was under no illusions; he himself had sentenced Isabella to spinsterhood.

Over the course of recent months, as his own health deteriorated, Charles had begun reminiscing. He'd been watching his daughter wistfully, seeing tiny, precious reminders, like flecks of her mother glowing within her.

While the distance of time which separated them grew each day, their reconciliation drew closer. He could feel Renee along the path of his life, like an invisible string he'd been following all along. It made him smile to think of her that way, waiting for him beyond the twilight.

He missed his wife so much, seeing an echo of her smile, her bearing, her stubborn streak, reflected in their progeny.

There was the way that Isabella tucked her feet up under her while reading, her skirts a calico waterfall spilling loosely over the edge of her armchair. A serious crease would sometimes appear between her dark brows when deeply in thought, and if the crease was there at the same time as a certain tilt of her defiant chin, he would blink and look away before his eyes clouded with years of longing for his long-dead Renee.

The closer he watched her, the more Charles began to realise that there was so much more depth beneath her serious exterior than the practical, impervious creature he had thought her to be. Isabella was bold and brave, and she was no man's fool, but she was indeed, in some measure at least, a sensual creature like Renee had been.

Isabella was not the mirror image of her mother, but Charles had begun to see that neither was she an echo of himself. Perhaps age had made him sentimental, but his eyes would soften and his heart drip with fondness at the way she was both of them, and neither.

He had seen her eyes widen in wonder as she observed flashes of lightning split stormy skies with their thunderous bolts. When she walked, her hand would reach out and lithe fingers would unfold to touch a wildflower by the roadside. He loved her quiet beauty, then.

When tending to their little horse, she would caress the velvet nose and scratch lightly under his mane, a smile brightening her pretty face as the animal snorted his pleasure.

Oh yes, Renee lived within her at those times.

But, there were other moments, too, when Charles would see himself.

He began to see that it was her loneliness that had made her more like him. She had loved once, and, Charles thought, once was enough for her. In this, she was more like him than he'd cared to admit. When it came to how they loved, they were two peas in a pod. His chest tightened to think that he may have taught his only daughter all about stagnating in grief.

He felt so old, and so very tired.

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Weeks passed, and Charles Swan and his daughter lived on as before but for that niggling splinter under his skin.

They still attended church on Sundays, but now, instead of misguidedly attempting to make Isabella a match, the trip had become a pleasant routine for them both. Sometimes, she went on her own, reluctant to leave her ailing father until he lost his patience with her and shooed her out regardless.

Isabella no longer dreaded Pastor Newton, not since she noticed the Stanleys—including Miss Jessica—were lately seated in the front pews, directly opposite the pulpit, where they observed the pastor with adoring eyes. Isabella held no grudge against him, and breathed a sigh of relief that he had moved on so free of bitterness.

Of course, her attention was elsewhere, too, certainly not on the boring sermons. No, she had not changed her mind about the value of those.

It seemed to Isabella that she suddenly felt the horseman everywhere. She would turn her head to speak to someone, and there in the crowd—was it? No. Could not be. Sometimes all she saw was a flap of a coat tail as a man disappeared into a store, and her heart would beat so fast, her head spun with it. She'd walk the muddy road home and imagine she felt eyes on her, except for two times when she didn't have to imagine it at all, but knew it for certain.

Both times, she'd seen him in town. A deceptive calm cloaked him like a blanket, but underneath he was watchful and dangerous- a coiled spring._ Stay away_, he exuded, drawing her ever closer.

_Anthony_, she would chant under her breath, throwing her silent voice at him. _I know you. I see you._

Isabella wondered what caused his hands to clench so tightly, fingers white and digging into calloused palms. His bearded face, clad in shadow, gave nothing away.

She wondered if he rode into town along the forest path not far from her home. She would imagine he did, and that she could venture along that path, almost walking in his footsteps. Strolling among the low fronds and young saplings at the edge of the road, Isabella would hold out her hand and collect droplets of morning dew into her palm, wondering if the miniscule beads sat on his beard the same way as they did on the ferns, like tiny, precious rainbow globes.

She imagined him sometimes with her eyes half squinted, unfocused, as though he was a shimmering figment of her imagination.

His appearances seemed random at first, a lovely and thrilling surprise. Until they didn't seem random at all.

On one clear night, Isabella lay beneath her coverlets, watching the moon's eerie light play upon the curtain lace. She watched smoky clouds ride across the night sky like ethereal chariots, the rider's specter haunting her heart's every beat.

She raised her hand to catch the moonlight, and as she watched the unearthly sheen wash her skin, an incredible realization dawned upon her.

Just as she had put her hand in the path of the light, she could put herself in _his_ path.

In fact, it was possible she already had.

Through a gap in her lace curtain, she could see the fingernail moon shining its ghostlight over the forest canopy and thought that maybe, just maybe, his visits were not as random as they appeared. He always came riding into town at the precise time that the sermons ended, though not every Sunday. She always looked for him as she stepped into the light of the morning, casting furtive eyes from the safety of the dimly lit church.

Suddenly wide awake, Isabella could not easily dismiss the notion that he came to see _her._

An abrupt turning-away, a coincidental presence, convenient time and the same place... they were not random.

The moment she grasped it, the notion became solid and real. Away went any hope of sleep while the spinster flushed like a girl, dreaming of things long put aside.

Could this man, who had haunted her waking thoughts, be likewise haunted? Were they two of a kind, spurned and longing?

Isabella gasped and sat bolt upright in bed. She whispered an incantation to the moon, to make it so, to make it real.

_Let him see me, the way I see him._

Laying back down amongst her pillows, she sent him a wanting thought, a moonlit caress, a beckoning sigh, hoping that the magic she felt in that moment would reach him in the mountains.

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><p>.<p>

For his part, the man of whom Isabella dreamed lay on his narrow cot with its crude, straw-filled mattress, tethered to the world by will alone. Desperation as powerful as a knife in the guts twisted his face into a grimace, and he felt as near to crying as he ever had in his life.

It was not often, but there were times like this night, when the loneliness crushed him from the inside out, and he wanted to wail like a wolf at the moon to lessen the pressure inside his chest.

He would hold onto the edges of his humanity, his civility, and clutch his arms about himself to stop from unravelling, from bursting open like an overstuffed grain sack.

He still had friends in this world, and _Shĩ-Pa'_s russet-skinned tribe had always made him welcome. The Quileute women were proud and brave, and he'd caught the eye of one in the past, many years since, but the old anguish in his soul was too loud, too crippling for affection to stick.

There had been nothing wrong with their couplings, even if only a momentary connection, a fleeting pleasure. He grieved for his family and she for her mate, and they shouted the anguish of their bereavement into each other, until she grew hoarse of that song, and quieted her voice forever in the violent ocean beneath the high Quileute cliffs.

When he'd heard of her choice, he felt painted by the color of death, the Pariah, the leper. He'd have clawed out of his own skin that day, if it were that easy to set the soul free.

And now, years later, here was a woman whose appeal seemed endless, and though she was a complete mystery to him, he wanted her like no other. He craved her scent and could only imagine what a taste of her red lips would do to a starving man.

Under the fingernail moon, deep in the rainforest, resounded ragged sighs and discarded propriety and suddenly that knife in his guts became a hook. He'd been grappled, good and tight.

He resolved not to hide from her any longer.

_Let Isabella see me, the way I see her._

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><p>.<p>

**A/N:** Thank you for reading.


	11. The Passing Of the Torch

**Warning: This chapter contains character death.**

**.**

_He'd been grappled, good and tight. __He resolved not to hide from her any longer._

_Let Isabella see me, the way I see her._

**.**

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><p><strong>.<strong>

Isabella worried her wish like a slightly loose tooth all through a sleepless night, until it felt less like a revelation and more like a lonely woman's fancy.

She rose with the dawn and stirred up the fire in the hearth to boil the little kettle, then carried a pitcher of warmed water back to her room to wash. Sluicing fatigue from her face, she dressed, then sat at her window and watched morning fog pool like a blanket about the gnarled feet of the forest, attempting to talk sense into herself.

If Anthony Masen, for so she now absolutely believed him to be, had made himself a home here among the towering spruce and hemlock, then he'd recently become very careless indeed.

He was safe when the townsfolk thought him dead, but alive and at large was a different story.

Surely, he was risking too much in coming to town, and for what?

The answer had seemed obvious when the fingernail moon's magic shone upon it, but less so now she was awake- doubt had begun to creep in with the cold light of day.

Sitting at her window watching the world wake, she felt desperate and giddy, clutching at the clarity of last night's revelation.

How to know, _really know_? How could she draw him out in such a way as he would still be safe?

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><p>.<p>

That Sunday, she arranged for young Ben, the farrier's son, to take her father home after church. Charles gave her a certain look, but did not object to her reasons of wanting to walk home to stretch her legs and draw some sunwarmed air into her lungs. God knew they never got enough of the latter in Forks.

After the sermon, her heart beat a frantic circuit around her ribs as she and her father—the last to leave, as usual—shuffled toward the rectangle of mid-morning light at the church door. She'd long since given up pretending she didn't live and breathe for the anticipation.

And though it wasn't unexpected, her clamoring heart almost leaped from her chest when she saw the drifter riding his big bay down the tree-lined alley from the forest, dark and brooding like an antihero.

Isabella blushed, wondering if he could feel her hunger prickle his skin like a breath of cold air.

She led her father out into the light, still thinking of ways to bring her man to her, when the world tilted on its axis.

If not for her father's warm arm and the solid earth under her feet, she might have floated away like a feather in the wind when Anthony Masen raised his hand, gripped the edge of his worn hat and slowly, _deliberately_ tipped it toward her.

Isabella's heart stammered and yelped, swelling in her chest until it took up all the room and choked her.

Snapping clammy hands into tight fists, Isabella did the only thing she could. She ever so slightly inclined her own head toward the man who'd stolen her reason.

Her eyes followed him until he disappeared into town. When she came back to herself, it was to meet her father's sad and knowing gaze.

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><p>.<p>

Isabella helped Charles into the wagon seat, clenching her hands against the fidgets. She could see her father was suspicious, but kept her eyes downcast and her disposition cheerful, though she felt hot roses blooming on her cheeks under his silent scrutiny.

"There, Pa, are you comfortable?" she asked, fussing with this and that as Ben vaulted up beside him at the reins.

"Be off with you," Charles muttered, swatting at her fiddling hands. Isabella stepped away, anxiety bubbling thickly away in her belly.

"I shan't be long, I want to see if Mr. Banner has a length of fine lace for my-"

"Yes, yes, Bella, just you watch yourself coming home over that hill, there's snakes out," he interrupted, giving Ben a gentle nudge, and Isabella a very pointed look as she finally met his eyes. "You be careful now, you hear me, my girl?"

"I'll be home soon," she said soberly, acknowledging his warning. She slapped the pony's rump to get them on their way, and seeing them off with a wave, she set off down the main street of her little town.

Isabella had never felt exhilaration quite like this. Though chastened by her father's words, she relished every second of sensing a silent presence watching, guarding, as she went about her business in the town. She felt bold and reckless, something she'd never been in her whole life, or so she thought, measuring such things against adventures in books and tales.

In fact, her boldness was evidenced by her innate courage, and recklessness had nothing to do with dangerous folly, but all to do with willingness to stake one's heart on the unknown.

When she set out to walk home, she felt _Him_ following behind like a sentinel, watching her every move right down to the restless hand tapping against her calico skirts.

Finally home at her kitchen window but an hour later, she held onto the bench with white-knuckled fingers, watching Masen ride slowly past, giving her home a good, long look-over on his way.

Her smile was so wide it hurt, until she turned to find her father in the doorway, watching.

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><p>.<p>

They sat at the table with tight lips, clutching their courage along with mugs of sweet tea.

Isabella chewed on her lip, feeling like she wore someone else's face. "I can't explain it."

"Must be a reason," Charles pressed. "Must be something he's done to have you all skittish."

The tells flipped like a deck of cards through her mind, each one more obvious than the last. She felt faint. Yes, there was _something_, and she might as well tell.

And so Isabella did tell. She told Charles about how _He saw her. _About how Anthony Masen construed for his descent from the wild to coincide with her weekly escape from the church.

She knew it in her heart without a shred of doubt, though Charles tried to help her find that doubt in her mind.

"I've never, ever felt so- so powerful. Not in my whole life. Powerful and weak at the same time. I thought I would scream from it," she said, coloring hotly under her father's scrutiny. "He saw me home, Pa. He might've done it from a hundred yards away, but he did it none the less."

Charles said nothing, and she was glad for it.

She couldn't tell him about the hot fluttering deep down in the soft of her, stabbing her through until she was barely upright. Couldn't tell her father how her hands clutched each other in desperate frenzy when she thought of him.

Isabella couldn't express how hard it was to contain her indecent excitement on the steps of their church. Every part of her buzzed with excitement, and she felt it building up inside her until her body screamed with it- no, she could not say these things to her father. But, as is often the way of fathers who love their daughters, he looked into her eyes, and already knew.

He shook his head. "You don't know him from Adam, Bella."

"No. But I want to."

Charles tutted and looked out of the window.

"What am I to do with you?" he said quietly.

Isabella clasped her hands together, the now cold tea forgotten. "Give me your blessing?"

She could have laughed out loud when he shot her a lopsided little smile.

"My blessing is the least of your worries."

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><p>.<p>

After supper, Isabella walked outside in the gloaming, and on a whim, followed the path from her home to the dirt road.

Compacted wheel tracks marked the road from town to the Swans' house and the handful of others beyond, and then disappeared into nothing. There was no reason for the road to continue. No one lived beyond except the Quileute, and they had no need of wagon roads.

To Isabella, the natives seemed like mythical creatures, seldom seen forest spirits. She could count on one hand the number of times she'd seen one, and she'd lived here her entire life. They were invisible.

Looking at the worn grooves, she wondered just how far away Anthony Masen had to ride to come and see her.

The man had made furrows in her imagination, just like these wheel tracks pressed into the earth. She imagined him as a boy, and the idea of him as a child grew within her like summer warmth. At least she'd had her father to pick her up after her loss- this boy, he'd had no one at all. He lived with his fear and hatred, and it had driven him to murder. She wondered if it had given him peace to kill those men, or if their deaths haunted him still.

He did not appear carefree, and he lived the self-imposed life of an outcast, so she supposed it was the latter.

Isabella bent to the muddy road, and traced light fingers over the imprints of Masen's horse's hooves, sunk deeper, she imagined, by the weight on his shoulders.

Straightening, Isabella looked around her. The woodland whispered and rustled - she never felt alone here, though sometimes her small presence seemed very insignificant. The trees would be here long after she'd gone, the immortal guardians. It would not take long for the land to be reclaimed if people suddenly disappeared, nature would simply open up her mouth and swallow any sign they'd ever existed here at all.

It was somehow comforting to know that humanity was so inconsequential. Nothing she did would ever be remembered through time. It made her mind easy, her thoughts less harried.

Would her own existence be forgotten, too? What would the rider do, now that he'd certainly noticed her? Would he come to her, or did his conscience prevent it?

Isabella had always loved the manner in which her home simply sloped up into dense forest. Even as a child, the magical, fairytale quality of losing herself among the giants appealed to her and lost none of its draw as she grew older.

As she looked at them now, she wondered if she could ever disappear among them for good. Could she live in the woods the way Masen had for a good many years? The more she thought about it, the clearer it became- he could not live among men. Could Isabella live among the trees?

With these thoughts for company, she allowed the forest undertow to seduce her like it always had, and drawing her shawl about her, she stepped lightly through fern and frond, walking off the beaten path and into the shadows.

By the time evening had descended, her decision was made. Isabella had walked softly in the woods and found her peace, but any thoughts of Anthony Masen quickly fled as she returned to the house and found her father slumped over his chair, barely breathing, his body a dead weight.

When she would ride for help, Charles clutched her wrist in a surprisingly strong grip, and pulled her down to him. Holding her breath, Isabella listened as her father expelled his last into her ears.

"Only be happy."

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><p>.<p>

**A/N:** Thank you for reading.


	12. A Convergence

No Betas were harmed in the making of this chapter.

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><p>.<p>

_From Chapter 3:_

_He stumbled to the river and threw himself in, laughing and crying, wanting her so damn much that it hurt to breathe._

_In the dead of night, he could pretend that they belonged to each other, as lovers._

_And then, one day, everything changed._

_He knew this at one glance of her familiar and coveted form._

_For on this day, she wore black._

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><p>.<p>

In the days following the funeral, Charles Swan's daughter was seldom seen to venture outside her home. When she did come to town, Pastor Newton thought she wore her mourning garb like a shield, her allure made more lovely and delicate by grief.

Risking the displeasure of his newly minted fiancee, he found himself being especially attentive to Isabella, as her loss had the strangely conflicting effect of making her seem stoic and at once glass-fragile.

He could not help but be moved.

Truth be told, he worried for her. A woman living alone in a frontier town was vulnerable, no doubt about it.

It was on the day of the funeral that he first noticed her staring off into the mountains with faraway eyes.

Pastor Newton thought and thought, until suddenly, his mind conjured up an image of a stranger whom he'd seen come riding into town on occasion. As he watched Isabella Swan's dark head turn to the mountains again and again, the Pastor's curiosity was piqued.

The stranger did not make an appearance that day, but Pastor Newton's mind spun and worried the thought like a loose tooth until he could stomach it no more.

With Charles Swan given a good burial some days past, Pastor Newton took a stroll to the saloon. He sat outside on a bench alongside old Joe Cope, who'd seen all the comings and goings of Forks since back when it was still called Fords Prairie, and proceeded to ask the man some questions about the mysterious horseman.

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><p>.<p>

For her part, Isabella had spent the days since her father's passing on quiet reflection, packing away his possessions and sorting through her own. She found herself listening to the house creak and groan beneath her feet as she endured the silence, which had always seemed comforting, but was now oppressive.

She remembered her father's words, preparing herself and gathering courage.

_Only be happy_, he had said. The words had made an impression on her and still echoed in her ears like a foghorn through mist.

"I'm trying," she whispered into the emptiness. "I want to be."

For all her hopes she'd never felt so alone, her father's absence so acute and hard to fathom, the house too full of memories to be so damn small and empty.

It was time for vague notions to become solid plans.

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><p>.<p>

Some days later, as she stepped out from the office of J. Jenks, Notary, Isabella felt the fresh air on her face and smiled. It was done, the first wheel in motion, her life no longer uncertain in a bleak future. She felt as though she was writing her own destiny, and it was nothing short of exhilarating.

She cast her eyes over the townscape and found whom she'd wanted to see almost immediately, dismounting from his tall bay and tying the horse to a post near John Banner's store. He stood apart like a black sunbeam and Isabella's heart lodged in her throat. She had known, somehow, that he would be here. She had trusted.

It was not Sunday, and yet he watched the little church, as though he expected the closed door to yield her anyway. When he turned to enter the store, she knew from his suddenly tensed demeanor that he had finally seen her there under Jenks' striped awning.

As she descended the steps from the notary's office onto the road, the sensation of being watched sent a thrilling bolt of heat straight into her gut, low and sweet. She nodded as she passed by him, polite and decorous but for the secret world of her eyes, and when he tipped his hat to her in return, another tooth of the wheel clicked into its groove.

She smiled at his stunned face, gathered a handful of her skirts to keep clear of the mud, and began to walk home, drawing his eyes along with her.

She sensed him watching until she rounded Forks hill, along the road that led to her home.

Isabella, however, did not go home. Instead, she strayed from the road and into the ferns that lined it, disappearing among them like a wisp of black fog.

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><p>.<p>

Tense and tired, he rode into Forks with a back so stiff even Henry snorted at him-this strange, stony weight perched in the saddle-with disdain.

He found himself standing in front of the store at a loss for what to do and cursing himself for the worst kind of fool. He'd grown careless and knew it, having arrived in town without any thought as to why, having made no plans to account for a visit so soon after the last one.

He turned aimlessly, adrift in the street, and then there she was, beacon-bright, even in her widow's weeds.

His mind reeled with the implications of the latter.

Heart clamouring in his chest, he watched the flutter of loose hair around her face and willed himself to be still, even as she walked past and_ looked at him_, and then, oh God in heaven, _smiled_! She smiled as though everything between them was_ real_ and not just a wishful echo reverberating inside his heart's prison every night.

He noticed that a little mud had stuck to the heel of her boot, and as she walked by him, a roseate glow swept over her face and throat. He would have given his arm to know if her skin was heated by it.

He coveted that skin, her slim wrists, the dip between her clavicles, even the curve of her ear as it disappeared beneath her thick hair. He watched her wend her way home, resolving to approach her as soon as he was safely able, and if she wanted nothing more to do with him, well so be it, he'd have acted at least. He'd have been a man.

He leaned heavily on the wall of the store behind him, and suddenly-

Suddenly he knew even as his skin prickled.

He was being observed.

Casually, as though preparing himself to enter the store, he straightened and rolled his shoulders, quickly glancing every which way. The only pair of eyes trained in his direction belonged to the doughy Pastor, who must have seen their odd, brief exchange, and was no doubt wondering who, and where from, and why.  
>He knew then he would not be able to come back to Forks. Despair lodged in his throat like he'd swallowed a hot stone.<p>

Pretending he hadn't noticed the Pastor's scrutiny, he quickly ducked into the store and made a purchase for the sake of appearances. He didn't realize he'd bought a pair of scissors until he was back in the saddle on his way out of town, and looking at them heavy and glinting in the palm of his hand.

He was abruptly pulled out of his thoughts when Henry snorted indignantly. Instantly, his awareness snapped back to his surroundings.

Though outwardly he had not changed his stance in the saddle, the weight of his Colt sat suddenly heavier over his hip. The pine forest stretched out endlessly in front of him, and at first he couldn't fathom the reason for Henry's unease.

It was too quiet.

Henry continued onward, hooves kicking up slivers of soil on the dirt road, ears flicking and panning for sounds, until at last, the forest yielded its secret.

The sea of fern and frond parted to his left, and from it emerged Isabella, silent, black as a wraith, and looking directly at him.

He could not comprehend what he was seeing.

Henry came to a stop as both man and horse froze under her intent, unwavering gaze.

Startled, he acted on instinct, greeting her with a slight tip of his felt hat.

Isabella inclined her sleek, dark head toward him, returning the courtesy.

He thought his heart would stop at the grace with which she moved toward him, and he sat rooted to the spot, gripping Henry's reins in hot fists.

"Hello," she said quietly, her dark eyes unreadable. "My name is Isabella Swan, and I'm very pleased to finally make your acquaintance. Mister Masen, I presume?"

It seemed like an age before he could force a response past the great obstacle suddenly lodged in his throat. He should have thought of this. Should have realized she was clever, too. Should have known she was perfect. Rusty and hoarse, his words fell haltingly. "That was a long time ago. It's Edward now. Edward Cullen."

And then, he dismounted from his saddle, and came toward her with his heart singing, _Yes, yes_, and _now_.

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><p>.<p>

**A/N:** Thank you for reading.


	13. In Her Hands, the Reins

No Betas were harmed in the making of this chapter.

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><p>.<p>

_It seemed like an age before he could force a response past the great obstacle suddenly lodged in his throat. He should have thought of this. Should have realized she was clever, too. Should have known she was perfect. Rusty and hoarse, his words fell haltingly. "That was a long time ago. It's Edward now. Edward Cullen."_

_And then, he dismounted from his saddle, and came toward her with his heart singing, Yes, yes, and now._

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><p>.<p>

If Isabella was startled by Edward vaulting from Henry's back to share the road with her, she did not show it. He took care to come forward slowly just the same, not wanting to frighten her.

"I see," she replied, then paused and tilted her head, considering his words. "Mister Cullen, then."

He could only stare mutely, his head spinning with the nearness of her, precluding all thoughts except for one ringing question.

"You want to know how I know," Isabella stated matter-of-factly, somehow plucking his foremost concern straight from his head. "Well, it was my father. He was the sheriff right here in Forks, many years ago. He recognized you."

Air rattled in Edward's chest as he processed this statement for a few moments. If Isabella's father had been the sheriff, it was possible he'd told her what Edward-then still Anthony, though he hadn't thought of himself as that boy in quite some time-had done.

He was shocked he'd never recognized stoic Sheriff Swan in the old man who'd always accompanied Isabella to church.

He swallowed dryly. "Your father was right, Ma'am. He was a good man. The best I knew."

Isabella's eyes left his face momentarily as she looked off into the distance, the grief plain on her face.

"My father was everything to me," she said simply, and Edward found himself remembering the weight of his own father's hand, dusty and slack, a trickle of blood pooling in the curled palm. He'd thought the grief good and buried but the years were only a veneer, and if he scratched it just right, the familiar ache was all his again.

_Anthony Masen_ had cried his eyes out into the dirt like a little child that day, with Sheriff Swan's hand heavy on his shoulder. Isabella's father had been the only one to give him comfort at the time of his great tragedy. Others avoided him like they would a leper, like he would infect them with his loss.

Now, it was _Edward Cullen_ who closed his eyes against the memories.

"I've been watching you too, you know, Mister Cullen."

He looked up, and sure enough, her bright eyes were trained on him. In light of that uncompromising gaze, Edward was suddenly very aware of everything. The creaking of worn leather was too loud, the green of the forest too bright, his beard not nearly enough protection from the willowy woman on the road.

He was close enough to her to feel the crackling halo tingling around them, as though the air was rarefied in the exact spot where they stood. Close enough to count the freckles on her nose and see the imperfectly perfect arch and bow of her lips.

"Will you walk with me?" she asked, as if more than one answer were possible.

_Anywhere_, he thought, and clenched his fist around Henry's reins.

And so, they wandered together along the road, silent, studiously not looking at each other. He felt her presence so keenly, it raised the fine hair on his arms. Edward had never realized this sensation could exist; he'd never experienced anything like it. He thought he might suffocate inside his own skin.

He looked askance at Isabella, taking the opportunity to study her profile, the shape of her mouth drawn so delicate against her pale complexion. For the first time, he was close enough to notice the shallow creases at the corners of her eyes, the echos of past smiles on her face. He had the strongest urge to lean in and smell her skin, to run his nose along her cheek and test the texture of her hair.

"Mister Cullen-"

"Edward."

"Edward," she repeated and tilted her head, as though tasting the sound, and the thrill of having her say it tightened his already white-knuckled grip on the leather reins.

"I think we are both of us people of few words."

He nodded, hoping his beard would hide the quirk of his mouth at this astute analysis.

Isabella walked on alongside with her eyes trained dead ahead. Her words were careful. "Am I also right in supposing that we have both caught each other's eye?"

Heat prickled up Edward's spine like an army of ants, until his skin ached with it and he shivered. She_ knew_. She knew and she'd _seen him, too._

"Yes Ma'am," he replied, surprised at the clarity of his voice when it felt like his whole body was thrumming. _Yes, I adore you completely_.

"I think we are also both alone in the world," she said after a time, eyes sweeping over the greenery lining the road.

Edward nodded once more, not trusting his voice this time, as Isabella cut the legs from under him with relentless ease.

"It doesn't have to be that way."

Edward stopped dead in his tracks, Henry snorting indignantly beside him.

"There will be people along to see you now that you're on your own, respectable men coming to court you." His voice was hoarse, panicked. "Why, you could-"

"No. I _could_ not and I _will_ not," she interrupted quietly. She came to a stop in front of man and horse, and rounded on them with decisive eyes. Edward swallowed dryly. He had never faced anything quite as terrifying, nor as magnificent as this woman.

"I am finished doing other people's bidding. I'm done with expectations. I lived for my father, Edward, I did. But he is gone, and has need of me no more." In the space of a breath, Isabella stood taller, the forest canopy making a vibrant green crown over her head. "Now I must live for me."

And how exactly was a man supposed to keep safe distance? Better men than Edward would surely have failed when faced with such courage.

"Why are you doing this? You don't know me," he said, scraped raw with a sudden surge of desperation. She might not hate him yet, but one day-

"I know enough. I know what Charles Swan told me, and his words were good as gold."

They stood facing each other and Edward let her words seep through the creases of his coat right along with the sudden rain, soaking down to his skin and into his very blood.

With a distance still to go, he came up alongside Henry and offered Isabella his interlaced hands.

Without a word, she placed her hand lightly upon his shoulder, her black lace-up boot in his calloused palms, and lifted herself into the saddle.

Edward didn't immediately release her foot. He placed it into the stirrup, rubbing intently with the pad of his thumb at the caked mud on her heel. Looking up, he found her eyes burning into his, one corner of her lip held lightly between small, even teeth.

His hand tightened on her foot, and he allowed his fingers to encircle her ankle while soaking up her scalding gaze.

"What is it you want, Miss Swan?" he asked hoarsely.

"Isabella."

He repeated it under his breath, nodding.

"I need to put some things to rights, but then I want you to come for me in a week's time. I want you to come here and collect me, and then, I want you to escort me to your home."

Then she smiled, and for the life of him, Edward could not recall why he'd fought for so long against the tide when it was clear he'd been hers all along.

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><p>.<p>

**A/N:** Thank you for reading.


	14. The Precipice

No Betas, yadda yadda. A quick recap:

A long time ago, in a frontier town far,

far away…

_Edward pines for Isabella, having noticed her attending church with her elderly father. Isabella pines for Edward and his mysterious drifter-come-mountainman ways._

_Isabella's father, the good ex-Sheriff Swan, recognizes Edward as the young Anthony Masen, who turned vigilante after his family were murdered by an outlaw gang._

_ Having exacted his revenge, the young Masen was thought to have perished in the wild, when in fact, he has been living the (very) simple life up in the mountains, coming to town only for necessities._

_Unbeknownst to all, others have also noticed the mysterious drifter. Questions are asked by Pastor Newton, some of them even good._

_Isabella is moved by the tragic story of young Anthony and when her father passes, she confronts Anthony, now calling himself Edward, putting an end to all that silent pining and setting in motion events which, dear reader, are about to come to pass…_

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><p><em>.<em>

_Then she smiled, and for the life of him, Edward could not recall why he'd fought for so long against the tide when it was clear he'd been hers all along._

_._

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><p><em>.<em>

Isabella drew her shawl around her shoulders. The bracing chill of evening and the salt on the air felt familiar, but the restless thrum inside her was something new entirely.

She'd endured the stifling confines of the coach for several hours and was well and truly ready to stretch her legs and lungs alike, to take steps in the direction she had chosen. Every moment sitting on her tiny allocation of bench felt like time wasted when she could be doing, and planning, and running forward.

Across the carriage, two women- a mother and daughter, most likely- had been perfectly cordial toward her, but she found she could not easily be engaged in conversation.

They'd given up on her after a short while, and now sat quietly engaged with some needlework, their delicate lady hands flying deftly above and below the hoop, leaving her to her churning thoughts. Isabella had hidden her own calloused fingers among her skirts and had watched their fine broideries take shape for as long as she could stomach it, but her restless mind was elsewhere, and her hopeful heart lay further still. She was a woman divided.

Soon, a silence fell in the carriage. Isabella watched the daughter's head wilt to the side, further and further, until it came at last to rest on the shoulders of the mother. Hair had slipped the daughter's bun and swayed with the movement of the carriage, brushing across a brow yet clear of the adornments age would bring. Isabella smiled, suddenly very, very fond.

She looked up to find herself studied in turn, the blue eyes of the mother kind and thoughtful. She quickly looked away from that gaze, swallowing around the hot stone in her throat.

From then on, she took to watching only the panorama of lush, thick forest from the coach's window, lulled by the pleasant clatter and creak of the carriage itself as it made good time, bound for Port Angeles.

With her machinations set well and truly in progress over the past few days, she had thought of nothing but Edward all morning, and he was on her mind still now at dusk, the shape of him, the thrill of him, calling to her even over this great distance.

She would see him tomorrow, if all went well.

Would he be there? Would he come for her? She couldn't help but feel a flutter of worry. She had taken steps which could not be undone. If Edward changed his mind or if he'd never meant it, she would be set adrift as surely as wood on the tide, at once free of all her obligations and cursed to seek whatever fortune a lone woman could in a world that was for men.

Coming now upon Port Angeles, Isabella set her mouth, determined. She wouldn't let doubt trip her up now. Not now, when it was all within reach. She had done with meekly taking come what may. Let people judge her unseemly if they would, condemn her for wanting a thing and taking it, but she would not back down.

A mighty shiver drew up her spine. Sometimes, she frightened herself with the strength of her conviction.

As they neared, she thought Port Angeles reeked of the ocean, the salt a thick and bitter tang on her tongue. She welcomed it, yet another taste of a life to come, another step toward something new.

When the coach driver helped her retrieve her modest bags, she felt no remorse at the necessary lie she would soon tell, as it would pave the way to the future lying so invitingly within her reach.

"A terrible shame to see you leaving Forks for good, Miss Swan," he said, and she smiled bittersweetly, nodding along as he expressed respect for her late father.

She gratefully accepted his fervent hopes that she'd yet find happiness in the home of her grand-aunt in Pennsylvania. For a very brief but horrible moment, Isabella wondered if the whole of the state of Washington knew of her past and pitied her. Looking into the driver's guileless face, she swallowed down the hint of shame, remembering there was nothing she could do to change all that had happened to bring her here. She could only now take charge of her own life.

And so take charge she did.

"Thank you," she said, hopeful, though not for a life on the other side of the country, with a non-existent aunt. "I shall try only to be happy."

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That evening, as she curled up restlessly in an unfamiliar hotel bed, Isabella thought of Edward, connected to her once more only by virtue of the moon in the sky and the sweep of stars. For the first time, she allowed herself to think of the man himself- having now met him, spoken to him, having so much as promised herself to him.

She thought of his hands, sure and easy on his horse and yet whisper-light and trembling on the dusty heel of her old boot.

She thought of his voice, the dark curl of it making her stomach clench with want. She looked heavy lidded at the moon as her hand found its way to her throat, brushed lightly over her breast and inched beneath her night clothes.

"Edward," she whispered at the moon, sending whatever magic she possessed directly to him, to ease his sleep tonight that on the morrow he would come for her like he'd promised.

She herself found sleep near impossible, even after her blood had calmed, her fire dampened.

Her mind would not rest, turned what could be over and over like soil for planting, making her terrified and thrilled, wary and trusting all at once.

And in the thickest dark before the dawn, she finally stole from the bed and pulled her hair up into a bun, dressed in Charles Swan's clothes altered to fit by her own hand, and went on her way with her hat pulled down low.

Wending her way through the town she'd only visited twice in her life, Isabella's heart pounded in her chest like a wild hammer. Here and there she saw people, men, coming and going about their business even in these early hours, and she buried deeper into her father's coat, slinging her pack over her shoulder like she's seen other men do often enough.

Exactly as he'd promised she would, Isabella found Ben, the young son of the farrier, sitting in the grass on the outskirts of town beneath the ancient bigleaf maple tree, her own horse saddled and ready to ride, nipping at the green shoots.

Ben stood when he saw her approaching, wary in his stance. It wasn't until she was but a few yards away that recognition cleared his eyes and he smiled at her, big and open as the sky, and so surprised that she laughed with glee.

"Did anyone suspect?" she asked, for her plan hinged on all things falling into place as they should, none the wiser back in Forks.

"Just as you said, miss, your horse was sold and since you took the wagon to Port Angeles, I took your horse to its new owner, is all. And if I should sleep one night in the open, well, that's all right for a young man, isn't it?

"Just so," Isabella said, smiling back, unable to stop. She could have kissed him, and did, bussing his blushing, boyish cheek in absolute and utter delight and terror at what she had done, and was about to do.

"You mustn't tell," she said again, for possibly the hundredth time, until he looked at her in misery.

"Miss Isabella, I never would, you know that, now, don't you?"

And his eyes, so earnest, told her that he would keep her secret, even if he only knew the tip of it and not the full iceberg.

"Dear Ben," she said, both their eyes a little glossy. "I know. I know and I thank you."

He smiled at her, uncertain. "You will be all right, Miss Isabella? Are you sure you-"

"Oh, yes," Isabella beamed at him, suddenly as sure as the dawn now rising. "I will be just fine."

And so it was that Isabella Swan mounted her horse like a man, the way she had always done as a young and carefree thing, tipped her hat in thanks to Ben, and rode for the mountains with her heart singing louder than the dawn chorus.

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**A/N:** Thank you for (sticking around) reading.


	15. Into Your Hands

No Betas were- yeah, yeah.

Wow guys. I honestly had no idea anyone bar a few who'd mentioned it to me had any interest in this little ficlet continuing. I'm absolutely floored by your amazing response. Thank you all so much!

This might be a good time to thank the amazing ysar and grrlinterrupted for making beautiful banners for this story a long time ago, which I've failed to properly acknowledge so far. If you check my profile, you'll find a link to my Photobucket where all the banners live, ICYMI.

This chapter, and the whole story really, was brought to you by the very inspirational soundtrack, "The Piano" - www . youtube watch?v=RctzXJsG3ZM

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A week's time, she had said.

Such a small number of days to wait, when Edward had spent hundreds of them perfectly content in his own company, never knowing one Sunday from the next until she had claimed him, frozen heart and wretched soul.

She had never even known it back then. He'd hardly known it himself, until the deafening metronome inside him that called her name even as it counted the days between Sundays would be denied no longer.

Never had a week crawled by more slowly. He'd fussed and fretted over his little cabin- would she truly want to come here? How would she see this place that he'd called home for years, when it was nothing but wood, roughly hewn and imperfectly fitted together with only his own two hands? It had been good and serviceable for a bachelor such as himself, but now, now it was—

Edward despaired of it, completely.

Walking in his meadow had brought none of the usual calm, and he found himself imagining scenarios where Isabella grew to hate him even as she stoically hid her disappointment. He imagined escorting her back to her home, then burning his cabin and everything in it to the ground and finding a cave in which to spend the rest of his days. He knew just the place- perfectly desolate and silent, like his own heart would be.

When the day had finally come, unable to sleep for the anxious tugging on his nerves, Edward had ridden to the boundary where the thick forest ended and Isabella's home land began, to keep vigil until she woke so he could take her away just as she'd wanted.

He would keep his promise - he would do this even though it likely meant the end of things.

Edward's hands had trembled when he thought of it.

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Riding in the pitch black of night, hours yet before dawn raised her rosy face, Edward had picked his path as easily as if the woman herself was north and he traveled upon a compass arrow instead of carefully picking his horse's path along a precariously wet, thickly grown forest floor.

He'd tied Henry's reins to a tree a little way away, but seeing no movement from Isabella's house by mid-morning, he'd come closer still, not wanting to wake her, the heat of shame prickling his neck at how urgently he'd come to crave her these recent days. In the end, he'd stolen close enough so that when she rose from her bed, he would see the flutter of curtains as she passed by or the glow of light thrown from her candle. He'd stood among the trees like a faithful ghost, waiting.

As the morning wore on and the mad choir of dawn birds dispersed, he'd become restless.

Not so much as a soft breath stirred the lace curtains. No sounds came to him from the house.

It had taken until the sun was at its highest for him to accept she was not there at all.

And still he waited. All day, Edward had skirted the nearby woods, watching and wondering, and all for naught. Now, hours later, the day had worn and frayed around the edges, just like his composure.

There was a fine line, Edward thought, between sanity and madness. He'd always imagined them to be poles apart, but truth be told, the two now seemed divided by the smallest of margins, hung between one breath and the next.

He was uncertain which side of the edge he skimmed at this moment, standing in the shadow of the Swan house at dusk, with Isabella still nowhere in sight and the house itself locked up tight. Despair crawled up into his throat until he could hardly swallow.

It seemed to grip him in waves, like a black tide. In one moment he was content to wait for her always, yet in another he was convinced that something terrible had happened to prevent her from coming.

Helpless at not knowing, he imagined her dear face twisted in pain or terror and cursed himself for having left her at all. He should have insisted on sleeping in her barn until she was ready, stupid, he'd been so _stupid_! He should have thought to-

Edward pressed his palm to his temple to still the runaway panic.

At his feet, Jim whined uneasily.

"Where do you go, boy?" Edward asked the dog as he knelt beside it on the mossy forest carpet, holding his hand out for sniffing and licking.

As was its way, the hound had been conjured up from only the devil knew where, simply appearing at his side as the afternoon stamped it's orange glow over the sparse sunlight. Edward had been so deeply buried in his own thoughts, he'd almost shot him, startled out of his stupor by Jim's paws crackling over leaves and bracken and rounding on the sound with his Colt already taking aim. Unperturbed, Jim had simply scampered to him, nosing at his legs, wagging tail and lolling tongue as good as a _hello there, how goes it, old man?_

"Where do you go, and why do you come back to me?" Edward said, fond.

It was a rangy thing, a dirty brindle hound, but its eyes were intelligent though its breath was foul, and it fended well enough for itself, the eerie and very satisfied crunching of small bones often heard around the place when Jim came to visit Edward at his cabin.

It had been easy for Edward to accept the dog as a friend of sorts when it had first started sniffing at his hunting campsite years ago. He'd thrown it deermeat and made a friend for life, it would seem, though it came and went as it pleased, and Edward didn't try to keep it. He'd named it on a whim, though naturally, it didn't come when he called it.

Edward smiled ruefully, scratching behind its ear, rewarded with a sigh of sheer bliss. "I'm glad of your company today, Jim, whatever the reason for it."

With one last pat to the dog's flank, Edward straightened, resuming his hopeless watch. Night had well and truly fallen, moonlight breaking through the thick clouds only to be soaked up by the canopy up high. Edward looked to the sparse light of it, helpless, clenching his fists.

Tonight, the moon gave him no quarter.

And still he waited.

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Edward blinked into awareness. He'd been dozing, he realized, and something had woken him. He looked to the moon and found it well traveled across the vault of night sky, which now blinked with a thousand stars, the clouds having lifted since he'd last checked.

He felt exposed by the brightness they threw over the landscape and huddled closer into the dark floor of the forest, trying to get his bearings on what had woken him so abruptly.

Beside him, Jim stood on alert, ears cocked and panning for sound.

Edward watched the hound in silence, then looked carefully around the log he'd braced his back against, following Jim's line of sight deep into the forest. He'd no sooner turned his head than Jim was off at a run, silent and swift like the graceful deer that picked their flawless paths in the woods.

Edward rose to his feet, gun drawn for the second time in but a few hours, flattening to the thick trunk of pine that rose high above him. Carefully, he peeked around the tree, his arm tucked in close to his thigh. He'd not raise it until there was danger.

Sounds began to reach him and Edward strained his eyes into the mossy, damp darkness, clouds passing erratically above, allowing slivers of light to slide through. Tucking himself close to the tree, he waited.

"Edward?" The voice was but a hoarse echo carried to him on the ferns.

He ran then, tucking his gun away even as he vaulted fallen logs as Jim had done moments before. There was Isabella's horse, exhausted and filthy with the road, and he couldn't comprehend it at first- couldn't understand what he was seeing. His legs ate up the short distance in but a few seconds and he reached her horse just in time to catch her as she slid boneless from the saddle, settling in his arms like dead weight.

Beside them, Jim danced and whined like he'd never been so happy. Edward looked from the dog, to the horse, to the girl in his arms, and swallowed dryly. She was looking at him, into him, the stars like fireflies in her eyes.

"Edward," she whispered, smiling. "You're here."

Smiling so widely his face began to hurt even as all his doubts fell away to dust, Edward wondered where else on earth he would be.

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**A/N:** Thank you for reading.


	16. Delivered Was I

Purple monkey dishwasher! No betas, yadda yadda. Thanks to misswinkles for still managing to muster up some excitement about this story and to everyone who has commented and sent along their support.

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The breaking dawn found them moving quickly about the only home Isabella had ever known.

She collected the parcel she'd prepared - full of trappings she could not do without, whether at home, or indeed in the wilderness - while Edward swept away careless tracks they'd left in the dirt, and cared for Isabella's exhausted horse. His dog had long run off after a hare, disappearing into the thicket. He crunched his way through the undergrowth until they heard him no more.

"He'll be back when he's good and ready," Edward had said with a grin. It was the first time she'd seen him smile. It made him look like a boy and her heart ached to see it.

She broke her fast standing for the last time in her father's kitchen, watching Edward through the window. She followed the turns of his big, capable hands as he hefted up and secured her packs, making room for everything she wanted to bring without a word of complaint. It looked like a lot, though she'd been frugal. She had always been a practical woman.

Edward seemed to fill the yard with his presence, and she couldn't take her eyes off him while brushing the dirt of the road from her hair and plaiting it into a neat rope down her back.

She watched him as he tightened the straps of her saddle, diligently checking the fit. He rubbed at them with his thumb, flicking away the many dried specks of mud spattered all over the leather. With a care, he straightened the blanket over her horse's flank, brushing it smooth. He was a doer, her Edward.

The tight knot beneath Isabella's ribs eased with a sigh as she watched him work.

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When time came to finally take their leave, Edward stayed by their horses, hat pulled down low over his face while she walked one last time through the little house to pay her respects.

Isabella sat in her father's chair just as he once had, and chased the ghost of his hands, rubbing her fingers over the armrests, fabric worn dull and thin where he'd worried at it, as was his way.

"I'll be off now, Daddy," she said to the four walls. It felt just right to say it.

In the bedroom, Isabella bent her head and kissed her mother's name, the lines of which had long ago been carved into living wood, the day her father had brought Renee here as his bride.

The tree he'd marked had been struck by lightning when Isabella was very small. She recalled how he had painstakingly removed the carving right along with its bed, how his fingers had followed the shape of her mother's name before he dressed it into a plaque and worked the panel into a drawer of her wardrobe.

Isabella smiled, knowing how Sheriff Charles Swan would bristle at being called sentimental.

She pressed her own fingers to her mother's name, too, and asked for the blessing a bride would wish to receive on her wedding day, for this was the closest she'd come to having one. The closest she had ever wanted to.

She took a deep breath and cast about her a last glance at the old life, then closed the door without turning back.

Outside, she looked to Edward and her heart smiled. She could regret nothing. He had taken off his coat and secured it to the pommel of his own horse, warmed by the work and by the rare spot of mid-morning sunshine. Sweat glistened on his neck. He had rolled up his sleeves.

Isabella stared at his forearms, veins brought to the surface, muscle cording beneath browned skin. Something twisted hotly inside her, her mouth suddenly dry.

"Are you certain?" he asked quietly, and her eyes shot up to where he was now looking at her with eyes so intense that they seemed to read her mind. Trapped like a fly in his golden sap gaze, Isabella's belly tightened, wondering how far inside her he could really see.

Taking the rein of her horse from his hand, she opened her mouth to tell him _always, completely_, then paused, both of them turning at the sudden burst of sound coming toward them, a concert of hooves rising like a rumble from the road.

They had to hide. Edward's wild eyes swept up the hill to the deep forest, but there was no time to run, she knew. They _had_ to hide.

"In here," she whispered urgently, pulling at Edward's arm. She led him into the barn, the horses trailing behind, until they could push themselves in behind the stalls amongst the wood her father had prepared for fires he'd never light. They wedged themselves in tight with the horses either side, coming to uneasy rest where the shadows were deepest. Edward put his hand over his horse's nose, murmuring quietly to it.

They waited side by side, listening as men dismounted and began nosing about in Isabella's yard.

As the sounds neared the barn, Edward stiffened beside her.

"House is locked up tight," a man yelled from across the yard.

A beat of silence, then, "Looks in order," said another, sounding a little closer to their hiding place.

"The sheriff," she whispered. Edward's eyes grew hard and resigned.

They both started at the sound of footsteps in the barn, turning first to each other and then to stone in the shadows, knowing there was nowhere left to go. A dog whined, and Edward froze. They had a dog, and it'd probably scented them already. They would be discovered now, all their plans for naught. Isabella closed her eyes tight, sent a silent plea to her father and mother, then looked up and straight into the face of Pastor Newton.

She could have laughed for the irony of the man she had rejected holding her future within his grasp after all.

With her heartbeat thudding sickly in her throat, Isabella took Edward's hand in her own, twining their fingers together. They stood motionless in the dark of the stable watching as the pastor's eyes drew down to where she held on to the man she had chosen, white-knuckled and desperate, and where Edward's grip matched hers for intensity.

They made their fingers into a tight nest. The pastor said nothing at all, nor moved an inch, no doubt shocked by his discovery.

Outside, the sheriff's men could be heard poking and prying into this and that, making no bones about keeping quiet; they thought the house deserted. Pastor Newton raised his eyes and looked from Isabella to Edward, who was drawn as tight as a bow beside her.

Isabella's breath came fast. Unmindful of propriety, she turned to Edward and wound her free arm around his waist, grasping a fistful of shirt and hanging on tight, anguish rising in her chest at how close they'd come to a chance at some kind of life, snatched and cobbled together and taken by sheer will of wanting.

"Anything in the barn, Reverend?" The sheriff called from outside.

The pastor's eyes were glued to where she clutched at Edward. She tightened her fingers. Edward was still as a pillar and just as solid as one beneath her hand. She looked up and whispered, "Run, just run, if you go now while they're busy—"

But Edward just smiled, let go of her hand and brushed his fingers over her hair.

"I've been wanting to do this," he whispered, slowly working his fingers into her hair to loosen her plait where it lay hot and heavy on her neck. He tugged it free from its ribbon and let it fall and sift between his fingers, sighing in contentment. Isabella felt the prickling of unshed tears burning in her throat. Edward gave her a smile that barely quirked his mouth and then faced Pastor Newton as though waiting for the axe to fall.

"Nothing here, Sheriff," Michael Newton said, looking them both in the eye as the lie tumbled from his mouth, smooth as silk. Isabella's mouth fell open in a silent gasp.

With a last unreadable look at her face, Pastor Newton turned away. Isabella looked up and caught Edward's eye, finding stunned disbelief painted there to match her own.

"Ol' Joe Cope's so close to the ground, he's seeing ghosts, if'n you ask me," someone said nearby, and another man could be heard laughing.

"As it happens, I did not ask you," the sheriff replied, even and calm, sounding closer. "Now go round back and make double sure the house is secure."

"Come now, Sheriff, the old man's sent us on a fool's errand, there's nothing here but ghosts," Pastor Newton said, and had Isabella not seen him do it with her own two eyes she'd not believe Michael Newton had it in him.

"Maybe not, but it's still worth seeing to properly," said the sheriff. The scuff of boots signalled that he was but a few feet away and Isabella's stomach dropped sickly. No, she thought. No, no, _no_. If Edward could be persuaded to crouch down out of sight, maybe she could convince the sheriff it was only her, that she'd changed her mind, that she'd grown fearful of the prospect of moving away from the only home she'd ever known and had come back cowed and ashamed. Maybe he'd believe it if she told it just right.

Desperate, she turned to try and persuade Edward to go, to run _goddamnit_, when a sudden commotion broke out in the yard, low growling giving way to the frantic barking and yapping of dogs, making a racket that could probably be heard for miles around.

"I told you to tie up that damn cur," someone shouted over the scuffle of men trying to separate two dogs with their hackles up for each other.

Edward's horse's ears flicked in anxiety and he gently covered its nostrils with his palm, stroking it to calmness, then risked a crane of his neck to look over the stall, eyes round as saucers.

"It's Jim," he whispered urgently, then shot Isabella a look of pure, wild joy, his teeth gleaming in the darkness. "He's bailed up their dog and— Oh! Oh no." Edward had gone from happiness to dread and Isabella stood on her tiptoes to see one of the sheriff's men taking up his rifle.

"No, it's all right, look!"

Jim, no fool when it came to men, had seen the glint of metal and had shot off like a rock from a sling, having unintentionally worked the miracle of drawing everyone's attention away from the barn.

Sure enough, the Sheriff backed off until his shadow no longer lengthened over the dirt floor of the barn and they could hear his men heaving back into their saddles and ribbing each other about giving chase to the crazy dog which had burst into the open from out of nowhere and whipped everyone into a frenzy, the most excitement the little town had seen in months.

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Before long they'd all taken themselves back to the road and the house lay as quiet as though it had always been that way, nothing but the mild sweep of a breeze to stir the leaves of the forest as far as the ear could hear.

"Son of a gun just saved my skin," Edward muttered, and quietly led the horses from the barn. He turned as if to help Isabella into her saddle, but she'd already slipped her boot into the stirrup and vaulted lightly to her seat. Edward's gaze slipped over the trousers hugging her thighs and if it weren't for his thick beard, she'd swear he was blushing.

"Our skins," she said, shooting him a look of mild reproach. She could not yet bring herself to so much as think on what Pastor Newton had done for them. Not until they were truly safe.

Edward gave her an upraised brow and a manic grin that sent a thrill up her spine, the curl of his lip slipping through the lattice of her ribs like a sharp and perfect blade, making a home in her heart as they rode away into the woods.

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**A/N** Thank you for reading.


	17. Deep Into The Forest

Wow guys. I'm beyond grateful for your lovely comments and messages. Thank you so much.

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They rode hard and made good time, winding their way up the mountainside enveloped in a strange, loaded silence. They were tired, people and horses all, but the urgency to leave Forks as far as possible behind them made them eager to push on.

They'd exchanged hardly a handful of words and at first Edward had put it down to shock - they'd both suffered a fright at their near-miss, perhaps Isabella was still upset. The further away they rode, however, the more he realized there was more than residual nerves to the thick blanket of awkwardness hanging between them. There was sticky-sweet anticipation, too.

Edward had never been so intensely aware of another person before. He felt as though he was trapped between two strong impulses, the first to pull Isabella closer, to fit them together and tuck her firmly into his embrace, to make her real by putting his arms around her and learning how she fitted there.

The second impulse, just as strong, was to push away from her intoxicating presence, to clear his mind and remember how to breathe again. Caught in her nearness, he thought surely this was how it must feel to drown. His eyes were drawn to her again and again; he couldn't help it, a moth drawn to her bright flame.

She looked exhausted; they'd both kept vigil through the night, and she had done so on horseback. Edward felt like a boor for making her endure so much on his behalf.

"You're tired. I am sorry."

"I am not sorry. Not one little bit," she replied, then reached for some inner reserve of strength, drew herself up in her saddle and rode on, sending him a smile that lit his path. This was no delicate flower. This was a true frontier woman, and her courage would outshine his at every turn.

Edward's hands felt unsteady as he flicked Henry's reins. He clenched them hard around the leather and followed in her wake.

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They finally broke through into Edward's clearing as the afternoon began to turn grey. Rain was coming. Edward was surprised it had held off this long.

He unsaddled the horses and wiped them down, then led them a little way away behind his cabin leaving Isabella to make her inspections of the place he'd called home for so many years. He would not look to see the thoughts writ on her face, though his heart had climbed into his throat and now sat there like a cold stone. He could neither swallow it down nor disperse the anxiety which had put it there.

He twisted a loose hobble around the horses' legs and set them to a well-earned rest in the meadow, then quickly walked the perimeter and checked that all was as he had left it. No matter how he ached to be with her, he would see them both safe, first and foremost. Distant thunder rumbled through the sky.

It was falling dusk when he finally came into the cabin to find Isabella already half asleep, wrapped in a huddle of blankets and furs on his own narrow cot bed.

He stilled in the doorway with her saddle in his arms.

She had set a small fire burning in the hearth but it hadn't yet had time to warm the place, though there was a pleasant glow about the room. And that's all it was, he realized, suddenly unbearably ashamed; one small room. Barely a house at all. He'd brought his love to a tacked-together shack in the middle of a forest and expected her to live there with him. He was the worst kind of fool and she was probably already regretting—

"I can hear you thinking," Isabella said, her voice cracking with exhaustion. Somehow she had managed to lace it with fondness.

Before he'd entered, he'd been unsure of what to do. Would she prefer it if he slept outside? Edward was certainly no stranger to sleeping under the stars, but he was loath to leave her to make do by herself in a strange place, far away from home and in much less comfortable conditions. Perhaps he could sleep right outside the doorway, he'd thought, so that if she needed something, he would hear. Somehow for all his agonizing, he had never imagined what it might actually be like to walk through the threshold of his home and see her right there, just . . . being. Sleeping and eating and working beside him. Simply living.

Edward closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Slowly, he opened them once more, and tried not to see only the limitations of his offering to her but the truth and earnestness of it too.

Isabella's sturdy boots were tucked away by the bed and her hair fell unbound around her, firelight from the hearth dancing upon the black coils on Edward's own pillow. And truly it hit him then like a ram, the beauty and trust of what she had brought him in return.

He stood frozen, watching the orange flickers play upon her hair until a small movement startled him out of his reverie. Isabella held the edge of the blanket open to him. Fatigue sat heavy and dark under her eyes but there was no uncertainty to be read in them. He'd not insult her again by asking if she was sure.

"Come," she said quietly, piercing the cloud upon his thoughts.

And so it was that as twilight gloamed upon the cabin, Edward let the saddle slip from his hands to the floor, shucked his boots and holster and went, climbing in beneath the furs and burying his face in Isabella's neck, and his fingers in the folds of her shirt.

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He held her just so until the trembling in his hands had subsided a little. His heart would not be calmed so easily, beating rabbit-fast against the confines of its cage. Breathing her in, he let his hands drift up into her thick hair, threading his fingers slowly through its dark softness. Isabella sighed and he felt her smile unfolding against his face.

"I can scarce believe you're here," he whispered, mouth barely an inch from her throat. He pulled her scent deep into his lungs and shuddered, nosing at her soft skin and feeling it pebble. "I have wanted you for so long. So long, you cannot know."

He moved back a little to see her face and the shadows cast upon it by night fast approaching. Already she was more dear to him than anyone.

"I can. I do." She brought her hand up to his face and Edward - want flushing through his whole body - put his mouth to the sweet work of kissing her palm again and again, then slowly the tips of her dear fingers, pressing a lingering caress to each one.

Isabella's tongue darted out to wet her lips as she watched him with her eyes overbright and Edward groaned, mouthing at the delicate turn of her wrist, the shape of which he'd coveted from the very first day. Her quiet gasp made his stomach tighten. Dear God, but she was beautiful.

He reached to brush a stray lock of hair from her face and she closed the small distance to lay her cheek against his palm, eyes glinting black from beneath heavy lids. Leaning in, he nosed gently at the apple of her cheek, mouths so close they were breathing each other's air. Edward thought he could die in this very moment, hanging suspended on the tautest thread. Coils of heat gathered deep in his belly, soaking through every pore until he ached with need for her.

He came in slow and sweet and finally kissed her mouth, softly at first, lips lingering, then with desperate hunger, both of them trading smearing kisses that took his reason away, made him open his mouth and let her in.

With a shudder, he came away from her lips, breathing like he'd been running for miles. Isabella's gaze was glassy and hot, her mouth parted and breath coming just as fast. Edward squeezed his eyes shut and thought about horses and nosy old men and the coming rain, anything that was not how he'd just made her mouth glossy and puffy pink.

Isabella had wound her arms about his shoulders and began to stroke his hair. Edward shivered from head to toe as her fingers scratched and soothed him, bringing both relief and the sweetest agony. Her arms were warm and heavy, holding him so close he imagined he could melt into her every curve.

Edward wanted more, so much more; he wanted to fall in so very badly, wanted to kiss and kiss and kiss her all night just like this, slow and deep until they were both insensible but she was exhausted and desperately needed rest, to say nothing of the things which still needed saying. He could take no more uncertainty. The rest would keep.

"You must know we cannot stay here now."

Isabella's hand paused briefly at his nape, then resumed its petting, deft fingers playing with his hair. Edward shivered in her grasp like a wild thing unused to any kind of touch. He supposed he wasn't at that.

"Neither of us will be able to travel into Forks anymore." Their near-miss at the Swans' home had changed everything. At least two people knew - and still more suspected - that Anthony Masen was alive. "They'll know me now."

"It doesn't matter. We don't need to go back." She sounded so entirely certain. It was a sure sign she hadn't considered the implications of being unable to access John Banner's General Store and other Forks conveniences.

"We might, for provisions. For trade and such. We ought to be close to where folks will trade for things we need. Look around you. This is all I have. My stores won't even see us through the winter." Edward felt her eyes upon him as he tipped his face to the fire cracking smartly in the hearth.

"We need nothing more."

Edward could not hold back the bark of panicked laughter. Perhaps she hadn't understood. "I cannot give you a decent future, a safe life. Don't you see, Isabella? I cannot- I cannot give you what a good man should give his wife."

There. He had said it; at once proclaiming his intentions and his unworthiness. Isabella began to tremble and his heart dropped right through his feet, thinking he'd brought her to tears of disappointment of all she had given up and for nothing, but when he looked up, she was stifling laughter into her hand.

"Oh, my dear," she said after a moment, having collected herself. "If I'd wanted that? If all I wanted was a man to take care of me so I could play at being the little lady, to darn socks and keep house, why, I'd have agreed to marry Pastor Newton."

Edward blinked, fearing he looked like a fish out of water, but unable to help it. "You'd. What?"

"I chose you," she said. "I want you. You chose me so I'll assume you want me just the same until you tell me otherwise."

She looked at him with such frankness on that lovely face, he could do nothing but nod mutely, spring crocuses unfurling within him, hopeful seedlings pushing through ice. Oh, there were more stories to be told between them, he saw. Enough stories to last them a long, long time.

"Well now. Here we are, choosing and wanting each other even though you're you and I'm me, and neither one of us is unmarked by life and death, neither one of us comes to each other perfect and—"

The widest yawn he'd ever seen caught her mid-word, and he felt his anxiety begin to lift along with the corners of his mouth.

"—pure. And in the morning when I'm not half asleep we can talk about it some more and you will be reluctant and shy and I'll use all my—" Another yawn, "—sweet words to talk you into giving up your virtue, and we shall ride horses and you will teach me to hunt. And if we need to go, well, so be it, but damn, Edward, I haven't climbed a tree since I was a girl and if there's one thing you have a good heap of in your yard it's trees for climbing."

Edward snorted a shocked and delighted laugh. "You just go on ahead and climb as many trees as you like, Isabella."

"Bella." Her voice became quiet and serious. "That's what my father called me. You can too, if you'd like."

He tested it in his mouth. "Bella, then. My Bella."

She smiled, all dark eyes and dainty wrists, hunks of gorgeous hair spread on his pillow and a fire in her belly that lit her from within, and Edward was overcome with thick emotions it was far too soon to name. Outside, the weather had finally arrived, rain beginning to pelt on the roof above them.

"And when you're done climbing trees, well, there's that virtue you mentioned."

Her laughter was low and rough and Edward kissed her red mouth again and again, desperately at first, then slowly, languidly, taking them down from burning, licking flames to glowing embers set aside for later. He held her while her eyes drifted shut and watched her fall into a true and trustful sleep until he too had succumbed to bone-deep exhaustion and drifted off, held safe in her embrace.

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**A/N:** Thank you for reading. On the home stretch now x


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